A Celebration of Marriage: OkDani

First off, thanks so much for inviting me to invade your blog today Mrs. H!!

I'm Danielle and have been married to my bestest friend and longtime
love John for 1 year and 2 months...but who's counting!?  We've been
together since we were young chuckleheads back in 2001.  Most of what
I learned about maintaining a healthy relationship was learned prior
to marriage.  We worked on our fighting...er...communication styles
and giving each other what the other person needs even if it's
different from what we prefer.  Example: I come home from work
immediately ready to blabber on and on about what happened at work,
what so n so said, and crazy convos I hear on the subway etc. and John
needs several minutes of silence when he gets home to get his head out
of work mode.

Since we've been together so long we really feel like we "grew up"
with each other so we relearned each other as we grew, and as we
learned who we were growing into as well.  Happily it feels like we
grew together as well.

Looking back at our year of marriage, and our 10 years of being with
each other, I can happily say we've had way more joys than struggles.
We had some growing pains as we became more independent though.  I
think that comes with the territory of figuring out who you are, and
what you want in your early 20s.
Also, losing John's father last year was a struggle for us.  He passed
on John's birthday and is still a somewhat tender wound.
The number one joy is definitely finding out we're pregnant with our
first child.  We're over the moon happy and excited to become parents
and share our love with a little mini-us.  Other joys are our trips
abroad and our small moments spending time together at home just being
silly and making each other laugh.  It's funny, I was saying goodbye
to John earlier this week because I was heading out to Seattle for
work for 5 days.  When we're saying our goodbyes he held me and said
"Who will I sit on the couch with? Who will I laugh with?"  It was so
silly but it's really so much of our life, just sitting together on
the couch talking and cracking up.

What we're most looking forward to is definitely the birth of our
first child.  Our whole family is looking forward to it.  Embry will
be the first baby in 16 years on my side of the family so everyone is
preparing to spoil this child rotten.  I'm looking forward to being a
good mom and seeing John be an awesome dad.  I'm also looking forward
to see how we continue to grow and balance our lives together.

My advice to newlyweds is: communicate, communicate, communicate!
Remember that your partner isn't a mind reader.  Sometimes we've got
to spell things out for these guys sesame street style so they'll get
it!  Seriously communication is so key, and even when it's difficult
to do, or you're wracked with emotions, sitting down and talking
things through, getting things out and being open and honest will
always make things better.  Learning each other's communication style
is also really important.

** Dani keeps a fun blog over at OkDani. She was the first blogger I've had the pleasure of meeting in person and can honestly call a friend. She and John are blessed to be having a baby boy so head on over and check out this soon-to-be-mama's blog.**