As a teenager, I had a friend who did hair out of her house, and around the whole perimeter of her house was a wrap-around porch.  Well, I fell in love with that porch, but maybe not for the reasons you might think.
I loved her wind chimes.
Every few feet, there was another one. And whenever a good breeze came through--oh! The sweet music they played.
Needless to say, I decided when I grew up, I was going to have a back porch with wind chimes.

As I posted about last week, we celebrated our anniversary. And I have to admit something. Gift-giving is one of my main love languages. Seriously. I thrive on being able to find the perfect gift for someone.
This year, as I scratched my brain, trying to figure out what I could get my husband that he'd have no expectations of, and would appreciate, I remembered an idea I had a while back.
Let me explain.
My husband LOVES baseball. More than I will ever understand.

How hard do you work to achieve your dreams?
My daughter is tenacious.
She decided at the beginning of the year that she was going to learn how to do the monkey bars.
Does that sound daunting? Probably not. But it was to her. Those three metal bars that separated the ladder from the playhouse of our swingset looked like a huge gulfing expanse to her, especially when she couldn't get past the first bar without dropping the short distance to the ground.

Seventeen years really isn't that long in the scheme of things.
It's not even half my lifetime thus far. Not two decades. Nowhere close to how long my grandparents were married.
And yet, with each passing year, I'm pleased how our number keeps getting larger.
Tomorrow is our 17th wedding anniversary.
Our marriage has in no way been perfect--are any? But it's been filled with tons of sweet moments, leaning on each other through hard times, learning lessons together, crying and laughing together, and more moves than either of us expected when we started this journey.

I'm used to being the one who leaves. The one who packs all her things and carts them to another town, another state, another apartment until something more permanent can be found. The one who gives hugs and says she'll keep in touch.
I'm not used to being the one who gets left behind.