How Far We've Come

I was reading a friend's post the other day...she was remembering back to the first year of her marriage and seeing how far she had come from the days of living in a basement apartment with sheets for curtains. That of course triggered my own memories of our first year of marriage...because we all have to start somewhere...and for the majority of us, it usually starts with nothing.

Ryan and I got married the Summer before our last year of college. We had nothing in terms of furniture...nothing. We were living in Indianapolis and I had some relatives living close by. They had some old stuff that they willingly gave us, and we of course greatly appreciated! A table and two chairs, a chair for the living room, a lamp, bookshelf, bed (which had a huge indent where the springs had broke, lucky for us it was at the foot of the bed and not at our heads), and a dresser. However, the first couple of months we didn't have the bed and we were sleeping on the floor. I would arranged the bedding perfectly to make it look as homey and inviting as possible...it looked as if the bed had sunk down beneath the floor boards and just the blankets and pillows got left behind. We had a big vacuum box for our coffee table, and crates stacked up for our side table next to our bed. I layed folded sheets over them to disguise them as best has I could. The sofa we used was a small love seat I picked up on the side of the road one day and used it in my dorm room for a couple of years prior. Yeah, that's right...on the side of the road. Who knows what was lurking in that thing! But it worked. The apartment did have a fireplace though! Every so often Ryan went out to the "woods" and gathered sticks...those, along with a duraflame and we had ourselves a pretty nice fire!

We only had one car, which I mostly used because I was doing my student teaching at the time. I had to drive in the snow/storms/blizzards for the first time ever! And Ryan had to ride his bike to school in the same weather! Yeah...what a guy!

I found some old pictures:

Ryan training and studying...look at that multitasking!

This was the day we graduated. My little brother, Jeff, is sitting on the infamous love seat.

Behind our apartment was a little pond. The Canadian geese would stop by on their way South.

All the ducks left, except for this little fellow. Our little green friend. We would stand out our back door and he would come running to us to get some bread.

I look back at that year, and I have nothing but happy memories. We sure didn't have much, but it's fun to see how far we've come since "side of the road" sofas and cardboard box coffee tables! What a year...I wouldn't trade it for anything!