11 Years of Marriage, 49 Years To Go

As implied in its title, this blog is my outlet for writing my reflections related to learning, success, and how to improve both. However, today I will take a moment to write about different but very related matter: my family. More specifically, today is our 11th anniversary, and I will reflect on the beautiful years of marriage that my beautiful wife Katie and I have enjoyed together.

We were married in the Salt Lake LDS Temple at like 7:30 in the morning exactly 11 years ago.

10 months later, we had our beautiful daughter. She has been a source of great joy in our life ever since.

Over the last 11 years, we have had many experience. We have endured health issues and personal struggles. We have worked very hard to help our daughter through her health issues and are constantly amazed at her perseverance and goodness. We have survived years of schooling, job changes, and relocation. And we have had a beautiful, happy marriage.

Here is our family in just after midnight on the first day of 2014.

Because this is a blog about success, I will now write why I think our marriage has been successful. Disclaimer: Certainly, our marriage has not been perfect. We have had our share of struggles, disagreements, heartaches, and pain. But we are still married, we are happy, and we are moving forward with hope for more great experiences. So, what do has made our marriage successful?

1. Faith and Hope. We believe in the institution of marriage and believe that God wants us to be married happily for life. We also have hope that if we do our best, we will enjoy great blessings of happiness and success.
2. Commitment. We are committed to our marriage. We are both committed to stick together forever, no matter the difficulties. 
3. Patience. We work to be patient with one another. One thing I have noticed is that it is easy to magnify the faults or errors of another, particularly a family member.  But I find this to be an immature lack of discipline. Focusing and magnifying the good in another person is the sure way to help them develop and improve themselves, and Katie and I work hard to do that. 
4. Kindness. Simple civility and kindness can go a very long way. We are far from perfect in this thing, but we strive to be thoughtful of and kind to one another.
5. Forgiveness. Nobody is perfect, and we both work to forgive one another's mistakes and errors. Katie has done a particularly good job at forgiving my own faults and stupidity.
6. Hard work. Anything worthwhile requires work.  We work to be successful ourselves. We work to support and teach our daughter. And we work to make our marriage work.

So, as the title of the blog post suggests, We are planning on at least 49 more years of happy, successful marriage. Thank you Katie for being such an outstanding wife, a great companion, and someone I can trust and rely on. We look to the future with hope and confidence that good things are coming, and that we can endure any difficulties. I close this blog post with a video playlist of totally awesome, EPIC love songs from the 80s (and some from 70s and 90s thrown in there, too). Oh, yes.