April 13 always puts a big smile on our faces.  It’s the day we met, 12 years ago.  Often, it’s hard to nail down the beginning… the very first moments of something.  I can’t tell you the day we decided to open the business, or the day we decided to both go full time, or even the day I graduated college.  But I can tell you the day we met.

April 13, 2004 – we met

June 13, 2005 – Josh proposed

May 13, 2006 – we were married!  Yes, next month will be our TENTH wedding anniversary!

Do you see a trend?  We had pretty high hopes for Hazel to be born on the 13th, but she wasn’t. Zane came through for us though… he was born in 2013.  🙂

How do we celebrate?  We basically look at each other with googly eyes all over again and reminisce about our lives thus far and think about how God is so good.

I look at my ring with wonder and amazement.  It represents so much life.  In some ways we live the most ordinary life, and in other ways it’s completely extraordinary.  Twelve years ago we were teenagers at a mall.  A year later, this ring was on my finger.  I loved watching it sparkle in the light.
Life is wildly different now, but far better than I imagined it could be.  We talked about dreams back then, but they all seemed so far away.  There were mountains in front of us.  We had $45,000 in debt when we got married.  We wanted to buy a house, decent cars, go to college, go on vacations, adopt kids… how on earth were we going to do all these things?

Little by little.  We worked on one thing at a time and God gave us a whole lot of grace.

I can’t wait to see what 12 more years brings.  At that point our kids will be in high school.  High school?!  Will we have two kids?  Three?  Seven?  Will we still have Fowler Studios as it stands now, or will it morph into something completely different over time?  Will Hazel shoot weddings with us on the weekends or will we live in Paris where we film documentaries?  I have no clue.  We have dreams, and we’ll work towards them, but mostly we’re on this wild ride called life.  We’ll listen to God and go where He wants us, just like the last 12 years.

I’ll leave you with two things.  One is a favorite verse from the Bible, the other is a quote from Sugarland.  Random, but hey, that’s us.  Both sum up our early days:

Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. -Zechariah 4:10a

We’ve both got dreams we can chase alone or we can make our own.

And indeed, we did.