Marriage: Year One

June 10th, 2018, today: Mr. & Mrs. Stoner; 365 days.

In these 365 days, we have learned a plethora amount about each other & just life itself. Here's the highlights of my/his/our highs, lows, & somewhere in between:

I learned...

*I still need to use my GPS to route me back to Montoursville, PA. (I had to GPS myself to the Lycoming mall 5 miles away when I first got my license, so this is really no shock).

*I still call my mom all the time & she will forever be my pristine listener.

*I unintentionally revert back to my maiden name, Grieco, when I am flustered & can't think straight when asked to fill out the obnoxious Military Tricare medical paperwork after 57ish different phone calls.

*I ran the Semper Fi 5K race in the pouring rain & did not slip on the "slippery when wet" bridge. I didn't stay long enough post-race to learn that I won for my age group, so I received this beaut in the mail.

*Clay prefers 3 towels to dry off with, post-shower. Who knew.

*Clay took me through an Osprey & they are not what I thought they looked like inside. On a real note, I don't even know what I thought they would look like. Also, the seats are far more uncomfortable than they appeared to be.

*Having a schedule for my life now is just a mere suggestion. I no longer use my planner, haven't since October; I got tired of erasing. This is huge.

*Special days this year (My birthday, Valentine's Day, our 1-year Anniversary) were/are just another day of the week when I can't spend them with the person that makes them so special. And that's OK.

*Sleepless nights alone are my normal. But, laying on his side of the bed when he's gone is the best comfort. I don't like the feel of his pillow enough to sleep on that though; his pillow goes on my side, my pillows go on his.

*To let good enough be good enough. Clay was coming home from a long field excursion & I wanted to be all fancy with dinner, only to learn that I would set the fire alarm off twice, burn the pan/ tuna steaks to a complete crisp, & catch an entire roll of paper towels on fire. Never tried that again.

*It is vital for me to have strong, supportive, & understanding friends that truly are thicker than blood for the times I needed someone to tell me it was OK to lay on that floor & cry it out with anger, but who would quickly remind me (and each other) to get a grip & move along. (This is not an abnormal situation for those wondering what might be wrong with me - LOL - I was most definitely not the only wife to react this way in certain circumstances this year).

*Time stands still.

*Time flies.

He learned...

*When he doesn't shower in 10 days from being in the field, the smell of himself & his cami's are nose-burning (Literally. I think I lose hairs every time) & only subside after 3 "extra clean" laundry cycles & 4+ showers.

*He strongly dislikes writing orders & waking up before the sun does.

*He can and successfully has fallen over on the couch while holding his cup of water upright, all the while falling asleep mid-sip, . That'll happen when you're running off 0 hours of sleep in the past 72.

*He really learned his physical limit- legit, his max capacity before bad things really could & did happen.

*Hospital beds automatically adjust themselves every 6ish minutes to "keep the blood flowing for patients," which only allowed him to take micro-naps for those 4 days/3 nights.

**I am sure he's learned more this year, but I haven't had to opportunity to properly interview him for this. Sorry.

We learned...

*I like to dance & sing way more than him on the regular. You wouldn't be able to tell by his face here though.

*Taking our own pictures together on our honeymoon non-selfie style was merely impossible, so we learned to resort to horrendous yet hilarious, awkward "not-ready yet" close-ups & said we would just place them side by side.

*The best nights sleep will happen when there are no windows in a bedroom. Our first move-in house we stayed at (June 2017-September 2017, with our amazingly generous good friends, David & Heather Pfleegor) was the perfect combination of pitch black dark & comfortably chilly, the ideal hibernation scenario. We had to buy an automatic light switch alarm so we stopped wasting every summer morning.

*We are going to be amazing parents one day, when we are ready. We had plenty of practice this summer with the Pfleegor kiddos. They loved that Clay let himself be their human jungle-gym.

*We will make great dog parents too. (Winston is one of our closest friend's fur-baby & he loves us so much that he pees every time he sees us).

*When we packed up our lives in one tiny U-HAUL, we would be living in the busiest & worst rated traffic area in all of the USA. Fact. So we have the "privilege" of knowing exactly what it feels like to be at a dead stand still on the highway on a Sunday afternoon. Let's be real, every day there's a stand still, but Sunday's still blow my mind. We either brace the upwards of an hour commute of 7 mere miles, or just stay home. But like Clay says, "if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space" & we sure can't live on the edge if we stay home.

*We will have gone to either Walmart or Staples 97 different times for Clay's military supplies. He's laughing because a lady saw him trying to hide from me & he got embarrassed.

*Our first Marine Corps Ball was not all it was cracked up to be. Maybe we were just hungry. Maybe the speaker should have shortened the 58 minute speech.

*Other's get to choose the course of our lives (when & where we move/where Clay has to be at the drop of a pin). Disclaimer: It will never be fun for anyone to get told what to do, but, some days those demands are easy to say "yes sir" to when they say "you are moving to Hawaii." (I will elaborate more on this upcoming move with a later blog).

**I literally was laying on the couch cold stone in shock; didn't move for a good 7 minutes.**

*Praying together makes an impact. When we have the chance to do this together in person, we learned to fine tune our prayers from "please give us the desires of our hearts," to "you know the desires of our hearts, but give us your heart's desire."

*Fear will always be a liar in anything & the devil will come knocking at our door. And he'll knock more than once. He can knock, but don't let him in.

*Faithfulness is gold in marriage, & selflessness comes in at a hard tie.

Happy 1 year anniversary to my little love. I loved you when we were 17, when we were 22 & said "I do," today when we are 23, & for all the number of years we have left here together. XO.

We will save our "one year anniversary take-the-cake-out-of-the-freezer-and-eat-it" tradition for our two year.