This week’s marriage challenge from Women Living Well was to list 10 things we admire about our husbands – and to show it to them. The premise is that while we may think our husbands know we admire them, we can’t really know for sure unless we actually tell them. I say all the time I’ve been with my husband for 11 years and I still have a major crush on him, so this list will be fun.

1. He is so smart it’s creepy. Obviously, he’s brilliant in his field and it’s amazing how often this sort of knowledge comes in handy, and I’d like to add here that he is 100% self taught! Aside from that, he’s got this overall level of awareness and smarts over the most random, and thankfully very useful, subjects!

2. He is a very goal oriented hard worker. Clearly, he works his butt off for his family and we are all very appreciative of that. He has since before we were even a family, when it was just the two of us before we got married. His work ethic and drive have brought us so far! Most couples do not recover financially to the place we are in after having their first child at 19 (and two more before 30)!

3. He is a very, very moral person. He always takes the high road – always. Sometimes it’s a little amazing, especially when a friend who doesn’t know him well sees it come out. I know how lucky I am to be with someone who ‘thinks with his big head’, you know? 😉

4. He is outrageously silly! Sometimes, if he hears me coming, he’ll hide behind the kitchen counter, or under my desk and jump out and scare me. I love it. Or when I’m taking food photos for the blog, he’ll get in there and make it silly and fun. We’ll stay up into the wee hours of the morning watching back to back episodes of the Simpsons laughing our heads off.

5. He is also such a grown up. He’s miles ahead of me, he can look at serious grown up stuff, like mortgages and taxes and health insurance and calmly formulate a plan. Or call our financial planner, which is also a pretty grown up thing to do, yes?

6. He is a serious family guy. Given the money and time and space, I’m sure he’d want some TLC-style big family. He is a sucker for babies and is the most protective father of an infant I have ever seen – even on this third time! Whenever he plans a weekend or day trip, it’s geared for the wee ones and all the major decisions are made with them in mind.

7. He’s a great husband – he’s a great husband when it really matters. When I was terrified and in labor for the first time at 19, he really stepped up. He was amazing. Even more amazing 5 years later when we did it again, and by the third time around, we could have done it ourselves in a cabin in the woods – now that’s a partner. 😉 And really, who gets a girl pregnant at 21 and actually marries her and lives happily ever after? He does! <3

8. He’s my biggest fan. 😛 The ways he supports my efforts all across my life, my friendships and my hobbies inspires me to always be supportive! He holds me to an ever-higher standard, which just pushes me to get better at all the things I do.

9. He is a genuine person. He just is who he is all the time with no excuses and I loooooove that about him. From the silly things, like a real love for bad movies to lifestyle things like how we run our family.

10. He has big dreams – and the drive to go after them. He inspires me to set new goals for myself every time I achieve something.

I hope it doesn’t sound too cheesy, but he’s a rad guy so it’s all true! Now, off to show this to him. <3

I’ve been participating in a challenge set out by Courtney at Women Living Well for a few weeks now, and I’ve yet to blog about it. Since I don’t tend to get too personal around here I was holding off but frankly I don’t want to deal with keeping up two blogs, and so much of the rest of my life is touched on in this blog – here we go.

Seeing as how I’ve missed a few posts on this topic already, I’m just going to touch on each week’s topic and what the participants should have written about. Essentially, Courtney created a challenge for like-minded women to put their marriages first and try to be the best they can be. I’m always down for trying to be the best me I can be, so let’s have at it. Plus it’s my blog. So there. 😛

The first week was an intro post, talking about what the challenge is about (done above), the second post was to be about remembering when we dated our husbands and the third was Monday, about praying for our husbands.

Here’s my intro: I’m doing this challenge because I’ve always been one of those sometimes annoying self-help book loving eager beavers. When I got pregnant for the first time, I read everything I could get my hands on and plunged in with both feet. That was 10 years ago and we have 3 kids now, but I’m still reading books and going to classes and workshops on how to be an even better mother. All along the way, I’ve been doing the same with my marriage, so this challenge makes perfect sense to me.

So, part 2: We met through mutual friends and spent a lot of time together in a large group, eventually we had fallen head over heels for each other, but we didn’t want to mess with the dynamic of our group of friends. So we just didn’t say anything to anyone – including each other. This went on for at least 6 months, until one day we were sitting around listening to music and we spent a night talking and talking about talking and finally admitting to each other how we felt. I was 18 and he was 20. We got married exactly a year after that conversation and had wee one #1 shortly after that.

Part 3: Prayer is a fantastically personal thing, but it can be done a sentence at a time over the course of a whole day. It can be lighthearted and down to earth, it doesn’t always have to be something you set aside a chunk of time for. Courtney suggests we use our wedding rings as reminders to pray for our husbands throughout the day. If you know there’s an issue your husband could use some help with, you already know what to pray for. Otherwise, his health and well being are always a good start. Every time I have noticed my wedding ring in the past couple of days, I’ve had a positive thought about my husband and said a little prayer for him. Life is all about the power of positive thinking, people! 😛

*Most people who are participating in this challenge posted photos of themselves with their husbands from their dating years. My husband is not fond of any of our early photos. I will put a recent one in the sidebar for you, but no dice on the wedding pics. 😛