Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Yuma Adventures & Celebrating 11 Years of Marriage

Nick and I celebrated our 11 year wedding anniversary on May 31. If you're new this little space of the internet, you can read all about our love story here. Ask anyone who knew either of us 11 years ago if they thought we'd last. People laughed at us and told us we were crazy.
It was hurtful, but I didn't blame them. We barely knew each other when we got married, and statistically speaking, we were doomed. But through each year that passes, I always think to myself, "that's another year down, haters."
If you know us well or have followed this blog for the last decade, you know our struggles well. I've been open and honest about our struggles on here in hopes that others realize that what you see on social media is never the full story. When our marriage was at its' rock bottom, I threatened to leave Nick and move back to Texas with both kids. He was more than willing to buy us a one way plane ticket back to my home state. It was bad. Praise Jesus for my mom who refused to let her 29 year old daughter move back into her house with 2 kids. We were forced to work it out, and neither of us did it quite willingly either. And....

It was a long journey...that included lots of therapy, church counseling, and prayer. I literally had days where I locked myself in my room, fell to my knees, and just sobbed...begging God to just fix my marriage.

But here we are! 11 years later. We still annoy each other some days. There are days that I pick fights just because I'm in a bad mood. We are complete opposites which means it's hard to find things we agree on. But we also have some of the most amazing life adventures together. I thank God every day for the big and little blessings he has given us.

In 11 years, we have:















So much life lived in just 11 years, and I have no doubt the Marine Corps will keep the next chapter of our lives just as full of adventure.

This year, we decided to do a "staycation", and discover some fun things about Yuma together. Yuma is a very small community, and from the outside looking in, there isn't a whole lot to do here. We wanted to stay local and find Yuma's "hidden gems". We got an overnight sitter for our kids (thanks to the Aggie network!), and ventured out to Yuma.

We ended up in downtown Yuma for dinner at a local craft brewery, Prison Hill Brewing Company. They have typical "bar food", which is right up Nick's alley. Give that man a nice burger and sweet potato fries, and you have one happy devildog. It sucks that Nick can't drink beer due to the development of an unfortunate allergy to hops. We still ended up enjoying some really good drinks and food there. The highlight of our meal there was fried avocado. It came with an amazing dipping sauce, and something I'll definitely go back for.
Dowtown Yuma
I had their signature Bloody Mary, and Nick had a jack and coke 
I'm sad I didn't get a photo of the amazing fried avocado, but I did snap a photo of this amazing  Southwest Bandito Salad. What sold me was the roasted poblano pepper (I LOVE Poblano) and the roasted corn it was topped with. It came with a creamy Chipotle dressing that was AMAZING.
Yuma is home to two Indian reservations (the Quechan and the Cocopah reservations), and both reservations have recently opened up a casino and resort. We headed to the Cocopah where Nick booked us a room (the Quechan supposedly is better, but it was completely booked). We figured, since we're in Yuma, we should at least check out a casino and do some legal gambling! Nick and I are NOT gamblers, but we figured it'd be a lot of fun to sit at the penny slots and try our luck. Our room at the casino was really clean, but nothing special. They don't offer room service, or anything you'd expect at a Hilton. It was nice though. The casino is downstairs, and like most casinos, it smelled like cigarettes and booze (gross). We each had $100, and found the penny slots.

The highlight of our night was me winning $400! I NEVER WIN. We cashed out, and decided to call it a night. I don't think hitting up the local casinos here in Yuma will be a regular date night for us, but it was still fun to do together (Yuma bucket list item). I may head back to the Cocopah with my kids one of these days to tour the museum.

The last thing I wanted to do for our anniversary staycation was to hike Telegraph pass together. Telegraph pass is a popular local hiking trail. We've taken our children there plenty of times, but have never made the trek all the way to the top. It's a 5 mile hike, and takes about 3 hours. It's extremely steep, and weren't sure our kids could make it to the top. It was the perfect way to end our staycation in Yuma. We woke up early the next morning, had breakfast at the hotel, and headed to the trail.

Some facts about Telegraph Pass


Because no adventure is complete without an Aggie ring picture
Story about this photo. A random hiker saw us taking this photo on the trail. He ended up following us down the trail. Later that evening, Nick got a random Facebook friend request and a message from the stranger. He had seen Nick's name tape on his camelback, and looked Nick up. He is an Aggie grade stationed here in Yuma, and has kids the same age as ours. Such a small world we live in!


We had so much fun on our little local staycation. The best part was just having that time together to reconnect as a couple without the distractions of our kids.

When people ask us, "What's your secret?", I never have a great answer.

But I will say, the ONLY constant and consistent thing our marriage has always been God. I think there's something to that...



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