Happy Anniversary to you too

Just to set the record straight, G doesn't wear a bathrobe.

And yes, we've come a long way since those beginning days. What a difference 9 years makes!! We spent four months in that studio apartment, but our next home was even worse. It was an old Brigham Young home divided up into several apartments. It was an actual historic landmark and we paid $410 a month for that place. There was no heat in the house, besides an old gas furnace that we had to manually turn on and off. The furnace was in the bedroom, so it did nothing to heat the rest of house. And turning it on and off every five minutes really wasn't practical. The house was so unbearably cold, we literally didn't have to refrigerate anything and no one came to visit us the four months we lived there. It was miserable. The wiring hadn't been updated in a very long time. We couldn't plug in a computer or heaven forbid, a space heater because there was no ground wire. G rigged something up to the water heater just to protect ourselves.

We were really, really poor. We were both in school, and we knew G had years of graduate school in the future, and I just had the feeling we should save every penny we could. That savings has come in handy. We earned $17,000 our first year of marriage and that paid rent, utilities, food, tuition, books, car repairs, insurance, tithing, savings, and surgery for me. Every photograph from that period of our lives paints a pretty good picture of what life was like. We are wearing coats, stocking caps, gloves, and sleeping bags in every picture. The pictures of Christmas that year are priceless. We're bundled up in warm clothes of course, but we both got each other Yatzee because I wanted some games (and it was the cheapest one), G got me shampoo, makeup, and a wallet, and I got him eggnog and a CD.

Those first several months and years were rough. Our lives are completely different now. We have a beautiful home, an adorable little boy, we both received our undergraduate degrees, and G successfully finished law school. They say "money doesn't buy happiness," but I'll tell you, it sure does take the edge off. It's nice to be able to provide for basic needs now, like heat and dinner out together once in awhile. We were naive and happy then, but we've been through a lot together -- and we are much better for it.