Our New Beginning

Five years ago, I posted this picture to Facebook with the caption: “Wow, 8 years and look what we have to show for it!”

It was eight years since hubby and I had met and started dating, Sugarplum was our new little peanut and we were headed back to Dublin as a family of four after arriving back in the states nearly two months before as a family of three.

Now today marks our 8th wedding anniversary and we have two boys to show for it, our family of six!

Many people see weddings as a new beginning.  I never really felt that way because while I was overjoyed to be marrying my best friend, it didn’t really change things for us.  We’d already established our lives together and had made a commitment to each other long before.  Our wedding was simply a celebration of our love with our friends and family.

What was a new beginning for us came ten months later when we welcomed Honeybun into our world and began our parenting journey.  To go from just the two of us to three was a big change.  To  learn to be selfless and be wholly responsible for another human being was an adjustment.  It was certainly a new beginning for us, and a feeling I haven’t had again until recently.

We added Sugarplum and Doodle and it just felt like an extension of our journey.  But the arrival of Pipsqueak signifies another new beginning for our family: the start of forever.

I can now look around at our four beautiful children and see our forever.  This is the family that we will journey through the rest of our lives with, that we will grow, change and learn with.  These are the people who will be with me on the rest of life’s adventures.

We are now out of the “growing family” phase and while the next 8 years certainly won’t look like the last 8 years, I can’t wait to see what adventures it’s brings as our children grow within our now completed family of six!