Throwback Thursday: The First Year

 

                Christmas came late…or perhaps extra early…this week. My shipment of 2025 scrapbooks arrived, and I just wanted to sit and look at them for hours on end. It’s a favorite day whenever albums arrive, and this time I had an entire year’s worth of books at once.

                The day before they arrived, I snuggled up in a corner of the couch, with Ryan beside me, and we spent a little while looking back at the very first Shafferland daily life scrapbook. We were married in December 2012, and this book covered the happenings of January through June of 2013. We hadn’t wandered down this section of memory lane for a long time, and I read every word I’d written on the pages of that book.

                I make the books to preserve the stories. Why do I not read them more often? This week we read the stories.  

                Here are some of the observations I made about those first six months of marriage based on the pages of this book:

*We were much better about using our camera timer in those days. Fewer selfies. More tripod work. Perhaps we need to resort to this level of intentionality once again. It really does make a difference.

*We ate a LOT of sweets. Every single date revolved around decadent food, and we dated a lot. Perhaps some restraint would have been beneficial for me back then…and it’s intriguing to me to see how different our dates look now. Not everything revolves around food anymore.

*We went to our first marriage retreat when we’d only been married two months. I’m guessing most newlyweds don’t do that, but I’m glad we did. It was a great foundational investment!

*It snowed a lot that year. I have pictures of snow piled on tree branches, grills, and bird feeders. I also have pictures of a ruler in the snow, and you can only see the tippy top of the ruler. I do not wish to return to that much snow.

*Our reception was so much more work than our wedding. We held an at-home reception three months after our destination wedding, and just reading the recap of the setup day wore me out: “Both our moms and Allen came over for the day, so we had some extra help. We decorated from 11 to 5 and then went back to our house, where our moms helped us dip 15 gallons of ice cream into dishes for the next day.” I remember that so clearly. So. Much. Ice. Cream.

*Sometimes things don’t pan out as you imagine in the moment. I had an entire page devoted to the beginning of the sale of Ryan’s house that he owned when we were married. When I documented that event, the family that approached us about buying the house seemed to be such an answer to our many prayers. In the end, they left a trail of destruction and broken promises that cost us dearly in time and money and rattled our faith. It was a hard story to read, but it also reminded us of God’s faithfulness in the shaking.

*Sometimes the moments are really foreshadowing, and you don’t even know it. I had a page devoted to a date night where we supported some friends who were staffing a retreat at a lakeside conference center. I wrote, “I missed the lake so much – so good to see it again!” Guess what, Ryan and Bekah? Just you wait and see what God has!

*We went to a bunch of really cool concerts. (Thanks, radio job!) In those first six months, we averaged a concert a month. Obviously since I no longer work in radio, we no longer get such a deluge of cool concert dates, but that was SO fun.

*We savored our firsts. First New Year’s. First Valentine’s Day. First Easter. First birthdays. First annual birthday trip. First Mother’s and Father’s Days. We fumbled our way through the creation of traditions, and it was fun to see them emerging even in those firsts.

*We never rested – and it also appears we never had time to sleep. (Thanks, radio job!) Multiple pages told how we would arrive home between midnight and two in the morning. Multiple pages also told how we had to rush to try to be at birthday parties for family members and kiddos in our lives. We were exhausted. It showed.

*We saw the beginning of things that were uniquely us: like our “pirogi” – which was Ryan’s coined term for our pergola at our Marion house. We still use that word, all these many years later, though we no longer have a pirogi at our house.

*We did our first renovation and had no idea it was the first of a million of them. Do any of you remember our very first one? It was the kitchen at our Marion house. The room was tiny and so was our budget. The entire project was DIY, and we did all the work ourselves. It made a huge improvement in that space, and I smiled at the pictures of our teamwork and enthusiasm.

*We spent a lot of time in our backyard at the Marion house. That yard remains our favorite of any place we have ever lived, and it was our most well-used outdoor space until we came here to the lake. If we could transplant that yard to the lake, we would. It was the best.

*Ryan has spoiled me from the start. From breakfast in bed (Lexi makes that impossible now) to sweet notes in my lunchbox to surprising me with ambient lighting in the pirogi, he launched immediately into making me feel loved, and he still does. (Also, I really miss breakfast in bed. Having a food-motivated dog is sometimes helpful, but not in this case.)

*We went to a BUNCH of little kids’ birthday parties. It was the season of life back then. All our friends and family were parents of littles, so we attended five kid parties in the first six months.

*Our families have changed so much. I took note of a picture of Ryan’s family at Father’s Day. Nita took the picture, and she’s gone now. Allen is gone. Ryan’s brother and his wife have three more children beyond the one in the photo. His sister and her husband have a son that wasn’t born yet that day. Their oldest daughter now has a baby of her own. Ryan’s other sister is now married with three sons. Ryan’s grandpa has passed away. So much change.

*And the iconic photo of our marriage is in this book: you remember the ziplines. 😉

I loved this trip down memory lane, and I am so glad I captured and recorded our story. I still love capturing and recording our story!