1) Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

2) Andrej’s 27th Birthday!

3) The day we hopefully find out if Baby Ciho #3 (lovingly nicknamed by big sister Kaiya, “Ten-nak-oh-na-na”) is a boy or a girl.

If you’re reading this on the 19th, I would love for you to leave a comment and wish Andrej a happy birthday and let us know whether you think little Ten-nak-oh-na-na is a boy or a girl. Thanks and enjoy your 19th of January!

Due to the short notice, I didn’t have a lot of time to ponder and reflect on my own marriage in order to compose truly helpful advice. However, a little task Andrej and I did during our pre-marital counseling immediately popped into my head. We had to write out what we loved about each other and why we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. The point of the exercise was so that when our marriage went through difficult times or we found ourselves frustrated with the other one, we could read what we wrote pre-marriage and remember why it was exactly that we wanted to marry the other person.

After mom and I hung up, I relayed the story to Andrej, very proud of myself for remembering this little activity. I was sure he would agree that I had shared good advice and praise my efforts. Instead Andrej curled up his nose and said, “That doesn’t paint a very good picture of our marriage.” I laughed and said, “Well if it makes you feel any better in our almost five years of marriage I haven’t had to go back and read what I wrote, not even once. That has to say something.”

A week later, on May 31, Andrej and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. We had traded off babysitting with friends, so we had an entire evening to ourselves free of charge. As we drove to Holland (Michigan that is), we honestly couldn’t remember the last time we had a “date night”. We get a baby sitter often but it’s usually for house church, Andrej’s work events or hanging out with friends, so at the cost of babysitting these days we don’t make time for just getting away as a couple. Now that would have been good advice for my cousin: make sure you continue regular date nights even after kids are in the picture. Nevertheless,  it didn’t take long before dating came back to us and we found ourselves walking hand in hand through downtown Holland.

We had dinner at 84 East and then headed out to the lakeshore. We took a long walk on the beach, watched the sunset and reflected on the past five years and dreamed together about the next five. Andrej took a lot of fun pictures of our time at the beach and those are located here. We ended the evening with sundaes from Captain Sundae and enjoyed a slow drive home. A perfect way to celebrate each other and our commitment.

So my love, here’s to five wonderful years and not having to turn to our lists of why we wanted to marry each other…not even once!

Two days later, Andrej was at a conference where yet again his name was chosen from a chance drawing. This time he won an iPod nano! I think it’s time we use his luck for some things we really need like plane tickets, a digital camera and maybe even the Michigan lottery!