Today is our 30th wedding anniversary. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. It’s also kind of amazing to think we knew each other for 10 years before we got married (we met in 7th grade) which means we’ve known each other for 40 years. I literally can’t imagine my life without this wonderful man and I’m incredibly grateful to have him by my side.

I’ve never properly scrapbooked our wedding and that is something that is definitely on my “must-scrap-soon” list. I’ve made a few pages here and I hope to pull them together into a more cohesive record of the event. We are lucky that we had a very nice wedding day. Here’s a photo of us from our wedding day back in 1991.

What’s even more important is that we’ve had a great marriage. It has been far from perfect, but we love each other and we have stuck by each other through some really difficult times. And he still makes me laugh just about every single day. That really makes life a lot more fun!

I was trying to think of a way to document this big anniversary and I decided it would be fun to make a list of 30 things about our marriage.

1. We’ve lived in 3 apartments, 1 tiny rental home, and 4 houses. I didn’t include the 1 apartment where we started to move our stuff into and then had a bad feeling about it and moved our stuff out a few days later. I’m also not including a home that we put money down on and changed our mind the next day and got the money back.

2. We only had one car for about 3 years of our marriage. That meant I had to take the bus to school and work for about a year because my work was on the bus route and his wasn’t. That also meant that I had to walk Alex back and forth to preschool (1 mile roundtrip) and push him and Riley in the double stroller. The plus side was that I was in good shape because of that!

3. I had 1 year + 1 quarter left of college when we got married. I was able to finish while working full time.

4. Jeff had 2 quarters completed of college when we got married. Between his undergraduate degree + MBA, he was in school for 10 years of our marriage. He also worked full time during all of his schooling.

5. We had our son Alex when Jeff was still in school, I was 24 years old and Jeff was 25. Alex had a rough delivery (he was 10 lbs. 5 oz!) and some extra hospital stay time and we didn’t have great health insurance to we accumulated a lot of debt. That snowballed over the next few years and we ended up with a lot of debt. It was a great day in our life when we paid off all of our debt! We talked openly about this with our kids and have taught them to avoid debt as much as possible.

6. Jeff has worked for the same company our entire marriage. I know that is very rare in today’s world.

7. Jeff has traveled a lot for work during our marriage. There was a month when our kids were very young where he was only home for 2 days. Over the past few years, he has traveled about 50% of the time. Then the pandemic hit and his travel stopped almost completely and he has been working from home. We have both loved this!

8. We had our daughter Riley when I was 27 and Jeff was 28. Jeff was in-between his undergraduate and graduate degrees. We bought our first house 6 weeks after she was born.

9. Alex was diagnosed with autism when he was 3 years old. Riley was only 12 weeks old and we had just moved into a new home. He was diagnosed on December 31, 1996. We were told at that time that autism was a rare disorder that occurred in about 1 in 10,000 people. The definition of the autism spectrum has widened since then but so has the prevalence. In 2020, the CDC said that 1 in 54 children have autism spectrum disorder.

10. Alex attended a special needs preschool and then went to the Carmen B. Pingree School for Autism. I homeschooled him from the 6th grade through the end of high school using a online K-12 virtual academy.

11. Riley went to 2 public elementary schools and then I homeschooled her using the same virtual K-12 academy for 6th-9th grade. Then she went to a small charter high school. I never planned to homeschool either of the kids, but I wouldn’t trade that time for anything.

12. Both Jeff and I have had multiple church service callings throughout our marriage and our family has participated in many church and community service projects.

13. Both Jeff and I have served in community volunteer roles over many years of our marriage.

14. We have both always worked and worked hard. Even when I no longer needed to work to help support our family, I have still worked. We both joke about how we don’t know how to stop working sometimes.

15. We’ve had 1 dog, 1 cat, 1 rabbit, a few rats (purchased as pets), and several mice. He really wants a dog now but I keep telling him I’ve done my time with pets.

16. We had a big fight on our 10th wedding anniversary but neither one of us can remember what it was about. We joke about it each year when our anniversary rolls around. It’s a good representation of how we have been able to forgive each other and move on. So necessary in a marriage!

17. Jeff has sincerely thanked me for every meal I’ve made for him over the years -even when they don’t turn out. He’s always grateful for the food and never complains (even when I do).

18. We have traveled a lot as a family. Some travel was with our extended families. We often had to be creative to make travel work and I would find ways to have us tag along on business trips. The kids and I would hang out during the day and Jeff would join in at night or we would extend through the weekend. We have been able to see so many places this way while our kids were growing up. Almost all of our travel has been with our kids. We’ve been to at least 14 states and 5 countries as a family of four. We’ve been a few more places with just Alex since Riley moved out.

19. We’ve had lots of medical issues (mostly mine) over the years but thankfully, nothing really major. Alex went through years of speech therapy, occupational therapy, and counseling. He’s also had plenty of colds, chicken pox, a kidney stone, a broken foot, a colonoscopy, and an endoscopy. Riley had multiple ear infections, ear tube surgery (twice) chicken pox, a tonsillectomy, a dislocated kneecap, ADHD, and counseling. I’ve had 4 colonoscopies, 2 endoscopies, a hysterectomy, gallbladder removal, a tonsillectomy, sinus surgery, multiple sinus infections, several bouts of bronchitis, a few bouts of pneumonia, 2 kids, 2 trigger finger surgeries, cysts removed from my head, trigeminal neuralgia, and lasik eye surgery. Jeff’s had a few sprained ankles, several back strain injuries, 1 colonoscopy, 1 endoscopy, and a cold or two each year.

20. All 4 of us have served church missions. Jeff served as a young missionary in Osaka, Japan. Riley served as a young missionary in the Des Moines, Iowa mission. Alex and I served together in the family history center as service missionaries. Also, Riley’s husband served a mission in Norway.

21. We have added a son-in-law to our family a few years ago and he is a great fit. It feels like he was meant to be part of our family and we love him so much.

22. Jeff and I are both technology junkies and we share a passion for making our tech better and faster. We are always looking for tips and hacks and sharing them with each other. We watch Apple events like they are important meetings not to be missed.

23. Both of us have always been Utah Jazz fans and we have enjoyed this together throughout our marriage. We’ve watched endless games together and even attended in the arena. Needless to say, we are thrilled that the Jazz are the best team in the NBA right now!

24. Theater has been another shared passion for us. We have been to many plays over the years and we have attended the Utah Shakespeare Festival for 19 years of our marriage. We’ve also seen a few plays on Broadway in New York and been to several local theaters.

25. We have a lot of humor in our lives. Jeff will do about anything for a laugh and I will laugh at just about anything so we are a match made in heaven. It helps that he’s hilarious!

26. Because we’ve had such incredibly busy lives over the years, we’ve had to be very organized to make it all work. Jeff is always nice to give me a lot of credit for this and thanks me regularly for keeping us in order. Thankfully, he is quite organized himself.

27. We are both very aligned in the good we want to see in the world. We care about the same things and have come up with a mission statement for our family that helps guide our decisions for charitable giving and service. It would be hard to not be on the same page in this area and I’m grateful that we share these values.

28. We have a lot of differences and that’s ok with us. We don’t expect each other to always do or enjoy the same things. He likes to go 4-wheeling in his RZR and loves fishing and anything outside. I’m not very outdoorsy but I’m fine if he wants to go on adventures. He knows I would rather curl up with a book and maybe venture out for a few photos. We make it work and we respect and appreciate each other’s differences.

29. We both value education a lot. I think he’s brilliant and he thinks the same about me. He values my opinion and I value his.

30. We love each other. Even more after 30 years of marriage. That’s really cool!

I’m so glad I took the time to make this list. I wish I would have done this exercise earlier in our marriage. I hope you will follow my example and make a list about your marriage or your family or your life. It will be a treasure for sure!