I accidentally skipped yesterday, which would have been Day 12, but it isn't because I don't appreciate my husband. I started teaching again yesterday and the day got away from me.
Another thing, a 12th thing that I love about my husband is that he always finds me beautiful.
I was 25 when we met, 27 when we married. I weighed 118 pounds.
Times have changed.
No matter how much weight I gain or lose, my husband tells me that I'm beautiful. No matter how short or long my hair gets, straight or curly, glasses or contacts, he still tells me that I'm beautiful.
And whether I believe him or not, it's nice to hear it after 25 years of marriage.
Here we are at the entry to Le Riad, a Moroccan restaurant in Aix en Provence
Even after 25 years of marriage, my husband is still romantic.
Being romantic probably covers a lot of those other categories I've written about, like giving me backrubs and wanting to make me happy.
He loves spending time with me, just the two of us.
A lot of times, we'll walk to the coffee shop. Or we'll go to the grocery store or take a walk to return the library books. It doesn't really matter what we do, just that we're together.
Tonight, he's prepared to watch The Bachelor with me, not because he enjoys the reality show, but because it's another way to spend time with me.
I didn't realize it when I married him, but my husband is very good at fixing things. In spite of the fact that he's a journalist, he has a real mechanical bent. He can look at things and figure out how they go together and which part might be causing the problem.
When I told him a few days ago that the dryer smelled hot, he pulled it out and cleaned the lint from the dryer vent and attached a new one.
When Tucker got a new analog watch and couldn't figure out how to set it, my husband realized that the bar over the knob simply snapped off to allow the stem to be pulled out and the watch to be set.
When someone drove past Spencer's car and knocked the side mirror off, my husband tracked down another mirror and watched a Youtube video that showed how to attach a new mirror so the mechanics worked and the mirror could be adjusted electrically, even though it included taking the door panel off.
It is such a relief to have a husband who can fix things without needing to call a repair person every time. And it takes a certain amount of patience to be able to take things apart and put them together.
I'm grateful my husband has mechanical aptitude.
Here I am on day 9 of reasons why I appreciate my husband. In case you have not been following along raptly (ha!), I find it helpful to remind myself how lucky I got 25 years ago when I married him. I'm not trying to say that I have a perfect marriage, only that marriage takes work and focusing on the positives instead of the negatives.
Another thing I appreciate about my husband is that he is much better at de-escalating fights than I am. I'm stubborn. I grab onto a point and won't let it go.
I reasonably know how to fight fair, to focus on I statements and explain how things make me feel, but my actions don't always follow the logical fight pattern.
Not every time, but many times when we are in the middle of an argument, my husband can pivot, concede a point, apologize for a specific thing that he did, let me know that he hears my point even if he doesn't agree. Any of those things can help to lessen the argument.
Here's my husband with one of the kids hanging onto him as they gaze out at Lake Huron.
I've learned lessons from him about arguing, not that I can always apply them, but I'm pretty sure my marriage wouldn't have lasted this long if he didn't know how to de-escalate.
Today, on the first day of the new year, after staying late at a party, my husband got out of bed and went to work. Someone always has to work holidays at the newspaper. He doesn't complain about it.
And he has worked hard at his daily job since I first met him. His salary has been the one that supported our family, giving me the luxury to stay home when the kids were little.
I appreciate that my husband is a hard worker and good provider.
Love.
Obviously, I married my husband 25 years ago, after two years of dating, so we love each other.
At the time we married, I realized that I loved him in a soaring, unconditional way that he might not have reciprocated. He loved me, but it was more tempered.
He has told me since then that he couldn't imagine life without me. So we married.
But today, I can unequivocally say that he loves "me more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow...." My husband loves me more now than he did on the day of our wedding.
I'm halfway through my 12 Days of Appreciation countdown. I'm focusing on the reasons that I feel grateful for my husband. I'm not doing this because I think that we have some sort of superior marriage, but in an attempt to remember the important things in the midst of the day-to-day work of life. Last night, my friend Najah came over. She's single and she gives relationship advice to my 23-year-old daughter. She started talking to Grace about the book The 5 Languages of Love. Since I've been
married 25 years, it's not a book I'd heard of. The basics are that people need to figure out the main way the give and receive love, and how their partner gives and receives love. The five main ways the author describes are"Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch."
As Najah explained them, I realized that my husband's pretty good at most of these (except the gifts which neither of us find important), but the main one I see is "Acts of Service." He'll come in from a day at work and ask if he can get me anything. That's crazy!
"Go relax," he'll tell me. "I'll unload the dishwasher."
And he is the main laundry washer in my house. He might have an ulterior motive since he thinks my laundry skills are inferior, but if he prefers to stay on top of the laundry in the house, I'm happy to accept it.
My husband has learned to steam the milk on the espresso maker so he can make me a latte even though he doesn't drink coffee. He shows me love through his acts of service every day.
Sometimes it's the simple things in life that help improve it.
Often, when my husband comes to bed, or if he wakes up in the morning and I'm still in bed, he gives me a backrub.
Who doesn't love a backrub?
Just one other reason that I love my husband.
I'm continuing to focus on 12 reasons that I'm grateful for my husband, but luckily, I can connect gratitude for my husband with Dreaming of France because I'm so fortunate that my husband has bought into my dream of living in France.
As he turned 60 just a few days ago, he has become even more excited about it. We've set a date, May 2017, so that means another year and a half of working, paying off bills, getting kids through college, cleaning out the house and then selling the house.
Luckily, we live in a coveted school district and should come away with a nice profit that will allow us to buy a house in southern France.
A year after we married, I dragged my husband abroad for his first European vacation.
Here we are in Venice in 1998.
He fell in love with France just like I did. He also loves Germany, Austria, Italy, and we imagine the short trips we can take around the continent once we live in France.
He's already begun to scare our children with comments like, "This is our next-to-last Christmas here in the U.S."
I can't think of anyone else I would want to go on my next adventure with. It's nice that as the kids move into adulthood, I still have a friend in my husband, someone to explore the world with.
I hope you are Dreaming of France too, if only through books, movies, pictures, songs or fantasies.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll play along and visit the blogs of others who are Dreaming of France.
Some days, when we get caught up in the day-to-day grind of cooking meals, cleaning, working, dealing with children, we forget about the higher qualities of your spouse. We can find ourselves in a negative rut if we aren't careful.
The positive thinking books encourage readers to focus on the good, to be grateful for what we have, and I'm focusing on the blessings of a devoted husband. I went for a run this morning with the temperature hovering around 66 degrees. That's ridiculously warm for December. I dressed in a short sleeved shirt and knee length running tights. After nearly 40 minutes, I felt drops of rain falling on me. I turned right, hoping the rain might not have arrived farther south, but the rain intensified and the wind picked up, roaring down the street and bending young trees over so that they nearly touched the ground.
As the rain soaked through my clothes, I listened for thunder and watched for lightning. In spite of the intensity of the storm, no thunder and lightning, so I ran the mile and a half home, dripping. Each step squooshed with water.
Even as I continued to run, I knew that I could stop in any doorway, pull my phone from my waterproof belt and call my husband. He would walk through the rain to the car and drive down the streets to rescue me.
Having someone who will be there in any situation is such a luxury; one that I don't feel thankful for often enough. So today, I'm feeling grateful.
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