Sweet Shoppe Designs – The Sweetest Digital Scrapbooking Site on the Web

Yesterday while you all were celebrating with the winners of the Summer Games, I was at my church for our “Leader Launch” and then having pizza with several of our friends from church and their families. We then came home and everyone took naps since we were exhausted. I then spent the evening working on a layout that had been on my mind to do earlier this week, while Mark worked on our kitchen island, getting it prepared for next weekend’s countertop installation. You would have never known that it was actually our 11 year anniversary, LOL. We actually went out to dinner last weekend while my parents were in town, so we had free babysitters. It was so delicious and so fun to just be kid free for a couple hours and enjoy each other’s company. We had dinner and then went for a walk along the river and then stopped for ice cream before heading back home to put the kids to bed. Our marriage hasn’t always been this blissful though. We definitely had our valleys when we went through the infertility and multiple miscarriages, loss of our dream to work with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Dallas, and my post partum anxiety which turned into my ADHD diagnosis last year. The thing is that those things that were things that could have pulled us apart were the things that actually brought us closer together. I always say that I know our marriage will survive after going through IVF, all the constant prodding and testing and hormones and everything were probably the lowest times in my life, but Mark stood by me through it all even though I wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around. What’s cool is that this is the first year that I’ve finally let myself be loved by my husband. I thought I had to be perfect… I just had such horrible self esteem issues and totally felt like I couldn’t be loved until I was a certain weight or able to run 3.1 miles or whatever excuse I could find. The awesome thing is I’ve recently gotten close to a group of ladies who are helping me turn my head around in my thinking and make me realize that I’m already loved and I will never be perfect and I deserve this amazing wedded bliss that for so long I never thought I deserved or was worthy of. Every day I’m so incredibly thankful for these women, and Mark is incredibly thankful for them to because for so many years he’s been trying to tell me these same things, but for some reason I just wouldn’t listen to him and he’s so thankful for them to finally show me how imperfectly perfect we all are and I deserve the happiness that I always dreamed of that day 11 years ago when I said “I do” to my best friend.

So, here is the layout I worked on last night while Mark was putting Asher down to bed and working on our kitchen island.

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