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Amber Hinds

Amber wearing a sun hat and Chris with a baseball cap and sunglasses on a beach
Galveston, TX
Life
/
May 29, 2022

Celebrating 15 years

The 27th of May was Chris and my 15th year anniversary. For the first time in our marriage, we went on a trip without children that wasn’t work-related (we’ve been on two trips to conferences in the past six years, but never on a trip alone together solely for pleasure). My mom drove down from Dallas to stay at our house with the girls and has been spoiling them like crazy, while we’ve been enjoying a very slow long weekend to ourselves in Galveston, Texas.

Mural painted like a vintage greetings from Galveston Texas postcard

As I write this post – the first I’ve made time to write in nearly two years – I’m sitting at an antique writing desk in the 1800’s victorian we rented a few blocks from the beach after a morning of sun, sand, and watching dolphins leap out of the water from a ferry boat.

The last few days have been luxuriously slow without any real agenda aside from a 3-hour couples’ retreat at a local spa on the morning of our anniversary. We’ve walked all around the island, went to an aquarium, enjoyed delicious food, joyfully sang along with the crowd at a piano bar, drank cocktails in the middle of the day, and took naps or spent hours reading nearly every afternoon. All without having to worry about taking care of little people or driving bigger kids to activities.

Amber and Chris posing in front of a victorian house dressed up to go out to dinner.

It’s been the perfect escape for Chris and me to get to focus on one another and talk about our plans for the future. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that we’ve been married for 15 years and together for 18. At other times, it seems like it’s been even longer than that. This year marks the point at which we have been together as a couple longer than we were ever apart.

I also realized the other day that this is an interesting “midpoint” in our marriage. The first 15 years were all about getting settled into our marriage, managing multiple cross-country moves until we finally found “home,” starting businesses together, and bringing our four daughters into the world. 15 years from now, our lives will be radically different: our youngest daughter will be a senior in high school, we’ll be helping our parents more as they age, and we hope to have sold our business. Who knows, we may even be grandparents by then.

Life definitely has seasons and it feels like this trip is highlighting a transition in seasons in our lives. Our children are all old enough that we feel comfortable leaving them for several days. We don’t have babies anymore and, unlike past times when our babies became toddlers, this time I truly feel “done” and that our family is complete. Happily, the only babies in our future are nieces and nephews and, someday, grandchildren.

Beyond that, in the past 18 months, we’ve made dramatic changes in our business (perhaps fodder for a future blog post) and have been talking more seriously about how we’re going to retire. We’re exploring what it might look like to move one more time into a “forever” home and are bringing the girls into conversations about travel.

If the first 15 years of our marriage were about wild adventures, taking risks, and following the winds to figure out where we needed to be, the next 15 years are about planting roots, increasing stability, and building a foundation not just for ourselves but for future generations as well.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written it out, though with posts being few and far between in recent years you might not have to go back too far to find it, but it’s worth saying again how incredibly grateful I am for this husband of mine.

Chris riding a ferry boat with a Texas flag behind him.

We married early, just two weeks after graduating college, and since then we’ve watched both friends and siblings marry and divorce. We’ve had rough patches just like everyone, and things we had to work through, even times when we went to bed angry, but through it all, I have always known that Chris and I are a team. We’re genuinely better together than apart and I couldn’t ask for a better life, parenting, and business partner.

Like many things, a good relationship is a combination of luck and hard work. I consider myself lucky to have found this man and that he fell in love with me in the first place. Beyond that, I’m proud that we put in the effort to build a marriage that has lasted this long, through ups and downs across 5 different states, and that has many more amazing years to come. Here’s to celebrating 15 years of marriage and 50 more to come.

A few photos from our trip

The front of our rental house house a large front porch
Looking down from the front porch into the tree tops.
The elegant bedroom with 5 nearly floor to ceiling windows and antique furniture.
The kitchen has original built-in cabinets with glass fronts and a gas stove from the 40s.
More antique furniture and tall windows in the living room.
A close up of the original brass doorknob on the front door with intricate details in the metal.
Bottle of Nor'Easter Bourbon from Nantucket sitting next to Amber's Nantucket lightship basket purse.
Taking a selfie with a neat mural downtown
A firefighting tug boat
A neat fancy pink Spanish style hotel near the ocean from the early-mid 1900's
Yellow jelly fish in the aquarium
A yellow fish swimming in a purple aquarium
taking a selfie at the aquarium
A hot pink tropical flower with skinny petals
Two turquoise tropical birds eating at a feeder
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May 29

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What happens when you go on a long weekend trip with only your husband, no kids, and no agenda? 

Lots of walking, cocktails in the middle of the day, singing at a piano bar, and time to write a blog post for the first time in nearly two years. Which I did! 

😮 For real. LOL 😊

Read it at https://amberhinds.com/2022/05/celebrating-15-years/

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May 28

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Today Chris and I have been married for 15 years. We're celebrating with our first weekend away from children while my mom watches all four girls. We rented an old Victorian from the 1800s near the coast in Galveston, Texas and spent the day at a spa, eating delicious food, walking the beach under the stars, and finished the night with a bottle of bourbon saved from when we lived on Nantucket. I'm not sure I could have asked for a much better day. I even had an oppotunity to get out the lightship basket purse Chris gave me for our 5th anniversary. ♥️

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Multitasking between performances at this weekend's dance competition.

Image Alt: open laptop showing the Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker website in the foreground and an empty stage in a crowded auditorium.

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