anniversary number seventeen

Aaron got home from tennis around 10pm and we played games with the kids until around midnight.  Long after everyone was asleep, I laid wide awake, thinking.  About how much I love my little family and how lucky we are to all be together, safe and happy and relatively healthy.  I thought about each year of our marriage and how things have changed, but really how everything is still exactly the same as the day we were married.  I decided to pull out my laptop and quietly scroll through photos of the two of us over the years.  What I found was kind of alarming (and sickening, if you ask Aaron.)  We have hundreds of photos together.  This is proof that he really loves me.

While looking through all of these photos, I thought about the first time Aaron said, "I love you."  He said it long before I did and I doubt he wanted to hear the response I gave him, but it just came out.  After he said "I love you." and I said, "I know."  Its something he teases me about now because I have always been a stuck-up brat.  But the truth is, I KNEW.  It was so tangible, he didn't even have to say the words. I have always felt loved by him, even when we were just good friends.  He knows my flaws better than anyone else, but he accepts and loves me anyway.  It's so easy to love him back because he's so open and vulnerable with the way he cares.  I know he feels the same way about our kids, other family members and close friends... he genuinely loves them and you can feel it.  Our kids feel secure around him because they KNOW he loves them unconditionally.  I want to be the kind of person who makes others feel loved.  I want to give it freely, without expecting anything in return.

(these are a few of my favorite photos/memories of the last 17 years...)

I wish so badly we had a photo of the two of us the day Gabe was born.  I'm still living off the high of Aaron's face when he walked into the bathroom and saw that I had delivered the baby alone.  Right now that's my #1 favorite memory with Aaron..  It will go down as one of the highlights of my life.