Ten years later

See these crazy young kids? Yeah, that was our first picture after we officially started dating. It was taken on May 5, 2001. Within 6 months, if you had asked either one of us, we would've told you that we were destined to get married. We just knew.

I'd like to think that our dating relationship really prepared us for marriage - it had some craziness to it. The weekend I was supposed to meet Kevin's parents, Houston experienced torrential flooding, making driving to Humble impossible. Three months after that first picture was taken, Kevin was hospitalized and diagnosed with Type I diabetes, and we had to become carb counting, insulin injection experts. Two years after that photo, my hypothyroidism reared its ugly head leaving me with debilitating leg pain and body aches with migraines to boot; I could barely get myself up and to class. But through it all, we stayed with each other. Because we knew.

In 2004, Kevin was working his first job at Humble Machine Works, and I was finishing up my Master's at Texas A&M when we got engaged. It was a simple affair with a ring hidden in a vase of flowers sitting in my parents' kitchen. I had just finished up working VBS for the week, came home, and tossed on some comfy clothes before running out to Best Buy with Stephen. Kevin was hiding in the dining room when we got back and came out when I read the card below. 

The card reads, "You have been there for me through the good times and bad. Let me be there for you for the rest of our lives. Will you marry me?"

A year later, we got married on July 9, 2005. We were both 24 and still so young even though we thought we were both already so grown up!


Our life was so much different then than it looks today! I mean, we don't even have digital pictures of our wedding since digital cameras were so new (and bulky), and cameras in cell phones were non-existent, especially since most people used flip phones!


So, what does 10 years of marriage look like? Here's a look back at our past ten years together!



YEAR ONE

Our first Christmas tree

Not a lot of pictures here; mostly because we were so busy working. We moved to our two bedroom apartment in Kingwood, and I started my first teaching job at Kingwood High School. 

We never ate dinner at the dining table, even though we did have one. TV was our escape (and DVRs weren't even around yet), and we camped out every night on our hand-me-down couches with our TV trays. 

We celebrated our first Christmas together and bought a tree for the apartment and even hung stockings. In January 2006, we decided apartment living stunk and decided to build our first house, and just after our first anniversary, it was FINALLY ready to be moved into. It only took 7 months for them to build it.

Cutting up the top layer of our wedding cake on our first anniversary

 

On our first anniversary

Our first house

YEAR TWO

Summer 2007

The 2006 school year brought with it a chance to teach 10th grade honors courses, which meant more planning time spent reading, planning, and grading on my part. Kevin got to enjoy the perks of home ownership, aka mowing the yard. 

We definitely moved up in the world when we purchased our own furniture for the house. (Side note: we still have the couches and entertainment center 10 years later). Our big spring project was spent completely redoing the landscaping at our house with my brothers' help. Good thing Philip had just started driving. 

In the summer of 2007, we went to Georgia to visit family and go to Louie and Diana's wedding, and then we took our first cruise to Cozumel for our anniversary in the blazes of the July heat (bad idea).

Mining for gold

Cruising in Cozumel

YEAR THREE

After thyroid removal surgery

We spent a lot of our time going to high school football games in the fall to see both of my brothers in the marching band. We kept toying with the idea of getting a dog, but we always were so busy. And since Kevin started working for Mustang Engineering in October 2007, he now had an hour commute both to and from work every day. 

In the March of 2008 though, our lives were turned upside down. I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and a month later I was having surgery to have my thyroid removed. It was a crazy whirlwind time. In between the time I was diagnosed and had my surgery, we went to Nebraska for my BFF Marcia's wedding (and they took us gambling!), so it was a nice distraction. After my surgery, I took 10 days off of school, mainly because I was crazy and just thought I had to be at school teaching. That June, I completed the rest of my treatment with some radioactive iodine and have been cancer free ever since! 

We decided that since we had made it through the other side of cancer that it was time to get a dog. Lizzy definitely was instrumental to my recovery and keeping me from feeling down and out about myself. For our anniversary that year, we wanted to get away, so we headed to my aunt and uncle's condo in Keystone, Colorado, where I let Kevin convince me to go horseback riding and white water rafting!

At Marcia's wedding, two weeks before my thyroid surgery

Bringing Lizzy home (can you see my scar?)

Kevin and baby Lizzy

We're on a horse!

And now in a raft!

YEAR FOUR

Me and Fish Walther

I'd like to say our lives settled back down, but not really. We started spending our weekends in Aggieland at football games since Philip was in the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band. I took over being one of the sponsors of National Honor Society at KHS, which required lots of after school time. And then, Kevin started working on projects that required him to travel for Mustang. He'd be gone for two weeks to Kansas and come home for a weekend turnaround of less than 48 before he'd head back to Kansas again. We did this for 3 months. One weekend we even met up at the airport for dinner because as he was flying in, I was flying out to Orlando with my NHS kiddos. I remember texting him when it started snowing that year here in Houston because neither I nor Lizzy were quite sure what to do. With Kevin out of town so much, we had to learn to make it work over long distances because after Kansas came his trips to Oklahoma. 

What is this stuff?

July 2009 

YEAR FIVE

Aggie football 2009 season

This year was a year of transitions. Commuting to Katy every day was just taking its toll on Kevin, so we decided to build a new house and move across town. Except our old house sold before our new house was finished...oops! So, we had to pack up everything we owed, put it in a storage unit, and move in with my parents for 3 months. And they say you can never move home again...pish posh! We moved into our new house a few days before Christmas, threw up a Charlie Brown kind of tree in the front window, and made it our own.

Since it had become my turn to commute back and forth to Kingwood, we decided that it was time to leave KHS and look for a new job closer to home. It was hard to leave such a wonderful first job!

Since we were moving and starting fresh, I also figured it was time to ditch the short flippy cut. It was a summer of awkward hair. Luckily, my parents whisked all away to Hawaii that year, so we were too busy enjoying ourselves to notice. Although the pictures don't belie the weirdness that it growing out layered hair.

New house in Cypress

We needed a little bit of Christmas!

Hawaii!

Boat ride in Hawaii

On our anniversary at Wicked

YEAR SIX

As Stephen's teacher

After an eventful summer, I started my new job teaching the first senior class at Cy-Lakes High School in Cy-Fair ISD. I also was my brother Stephen's senior English teacher; it was a blast! No seriously, it was. It was good to have a friendly face to see every day, and my mom even sent me a lunch to school with him every Wednesday. 

Since we moved out to Cypress to be closer to Kevin's job, they, of course, decided to send him out to work on a project out of the Deer Park office. Yay for commuting and crazy twists of fate! But again, we made it work, and Kevin earned some major brownie points at work for taking that assignment.

We hosted Christmas that year at our house, and our decorations were greatly improved over the previous year's...lol! We watched my last brother graduate from high school and get accepted into A&M. As our last hurrah, we decided to take a sibling road trip that summer to Myrtle Beach and back. The trip included some naviguessing, a little bit of ziplining, parasailing, dangerous driving on twisty mountain roads at night, and goofball antics by both my brothers (but mostly Stephen). 

Family photo - Fall 2010

A better looking Christmas this year!

At the Cotton Bowl - January 2011

At the Coca-Cola Museum on our roadtrip

Getting ready to parasail

YEAR SEVEN
Now that we had two brothers to visit every weekend during Aggie football season, that became a treasured time to spend with them. The rest of our time was spent doing less exciting things - working and fertility treatments. 

It was definitely a rough year for us emotionally with one failed IVF cycle right before Thanksgiving 2011 and another in January/February 2012. After the doctor asked about a third cycle and stating he wanted to do the exact same thing, we decided we needed a break and a change. Continuing to spend that kind of money with no results puts a lot of strain and pressure on a couple. But we never wavered in our pursuit, and that led us to Dr. Roach. When we started with her the atmosphere of the office and of the whole IVF cycle was one of hope, and wouldn't you know it, we got pregnant the first try! In the picture below, I had just started my IVF shots and was sweating like a pig from all the hormones!!

At the Mustang Anniversary party - July 2012

YEAR EIGHT

Second trimester football fun

The year of everything baby! We were able to keep everything pretty much under wraps about the baby until the end of my first trimester. The only people who really knew were my parents and my coworkers who had to cover my classes so I could run to doctor's appointments. For my first trimester, I had to go weekly for ultrasounds until I was released to my normal OB/GYN at 12 weeks. But it was nice because we got weekly snapshots of our wee one, and we first heard Emma's heartbeat at 8 weeks gestation.

We kept up our Aggie football season ticket games, even though it was blazes hot, and Kevin hovered over me like an overprotective mother hen. Right before Thanksgiving, we found out that we we having a girl, despite the overwhelming male Banes genetics! We were showered and loved on by all our family, and in April 2013, our Emma made her debut. With Emma's birth, Kevin got to stop making the arduous trek to Deer Park every day (hooray!), and I made the decision to become a stay-at-home mom (and have loved every minute of it). We spent the summer becoming more enamored with our little girl and each other. It's true, a baby does change things. A lot. But despite the tired and grouchy versions of our selves that sometimes stalked around the house, we knew it this is how we were meant to be.

Our precious Emma

First family photo!

A little bit better looking family photo - Emma was 7 days old

Summer fun in the pool at 3 months old

Heading out for our anniversary

YEAR NINE

Aggie football - 2013!

So your first year as a parent has a pretty steep learning curve to it. You question whether you're doing it right. You question whether your spouse is doing it right. You question whether your spouse is doing anything right...lol!

We made sure to always plan time to spend with just each other though. We still were able to sneak away for Aggie football games thanks to Kevin's parents babysitting Emma, and Kevin usually dropped Emma off at my mom's one day a week so I could have a mommy break and then we could have a date night after work. 

This is the year we learned to love each other not just as husband and wife, but as a mother and father to our daughter. You learn a lot about your spouse when you watch them day in and day out interacting and loving on your child. 

Christmas card photo!

Family photo - March 2014

Family photo - April 2014

Family photo - December 2014

YEAR TEN
Well, we're still trying to get this whole parenting thing down. Now, we've got a sassy toddler instead of a cutesy baby. It's a challenge for everyone involved. Emma started preschool two days a week. Kevin's still working hard at Mustang. I'm always in search of my next project (never mind that quilt I'm supposed to be finishing...), and we always seem to be on the go! Or maybe it's just Emma...she's always wanting us to go somewhere or do something.

This year has been the year of trips. Our in-laws took us on a Disney Cruise for Spring Break, and it was awesome. Seeing Emma meet the characters was so much fun for her, but I think it was even more fun for us. Even though she won't remember it, we'll always have those memories of what it was like for her to dance with the princesses or see Mickey Mouse for the first time.

We also took time out for a trip just for ourselves. This was the one thing I wanted for our 10 year anniversary (although Kevin did get me a pretty awesome addition to my wedding ring for Christmas). We spent two weeks in the UK visiting London, Edinburgh, and the Scottish countryside. It was so spectacular and nice just to be adults without a toddler in tow for just a bit. Time to just be spouses to one another without having to look for a paci or refill a sippy cup. Time for just us. It made us appreciate all the love we have for each and our daughter once. 

Meeting Princes Minnie

Sea turtle excitement

In London

In Scotland

So after ten years of marriage, do we have all the answers? Nope. If we did, we probably wouldn't keep working at it. Nor would we value it as highly as we do. It's been ten years of for better or for worse. Ten years of for richer or for poorer. And ten years of in sickness and in health (seriously, people). It's been an awesome ten years of what we hope will be a long time still to come before death do us part.