My Husband Rocks

I've been waiting a long time to do this post. I had to get permission from Matt first and he finally told me last night that I could share this.

12 years ago when I met Matt he had a little secret. We still debate today on whether or not I knew in the beginning or found out after we got married (too late!) As the years went by, I began to wonder how this issue was going to affect our marriage. Not ready to approach him about it, I continued to live life and ignore it. About 3 years ago I got serious about approaching Matt on this. I started by dropping subtle hint (yeah right) and complaining a lot about it. I threatened him, gave him ultimatums and started many arguments about this. He promised to deal with it after Sarabeth was born. 1 year later, nothing. Then I began to pray and God answered. February 7th 2009 at approximately 12:39 a.m., my sweet husband came upstairs and got me out of bed. He took me downstairs and out onto the back patio. He sat me down and said "I have something for you. I've been wanting to give it to you for a long time. I want you to watch something." I am sooo tired and not in the mood for jokes at all, but I love gifts and I couldn't wait to see what he had for me!" Then he pulled out a cigarette and said, "I want you to watch me smoke my very last cigarette." Are you kidding me?? I never dreamed this day would come, but I hoped and prayed. I just thought one day he would say he quit, but to ask me to be a part of something so huge in his life meant everything to me. Matt never did smoke in front of me or in front of anyone unless he was at work or with his friends that smoked. I wanted so bad to do something to make him quit. I later realized that there was nothing I could do. I knew God had a plan for my husband and our family and I left it all up to Him. I'm so thankful for a husband that listens to God's tug on his heart and follows obediently. The last 3 weeks have been really tough on Matt. I sat and watched him stir in anxiety and fight through the urges. He says they are mostly gone now, and he's able to cope a lot easier.

I know this habit has held Matt back from lots of things and made him feel inadequate when teaching to Word of God to his peers and counseling friends on issues. Now he is free from the stronghold that smoking had on him.

I am so proud of Matt. This was the best gift I could have ever been given. Although it was so hard watching him smoke that night, my heart was so full of joy to know he loves his family (and himself) enough to quit. The Landes household is much happier these days!

Rodeo Day!

To celebrate the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Sarabeth's MDO has Western Day at school today! They are having a special lunch and tons of fun stuff for the kids. I tried to get a few good pictures of her this morning in her Rodeo Princess shirt and Hot Pink cowgirl boots with flashing lights (compliments of my dad for Christmas)! She is suck a stinker! She kept pulling her hat off. I took her outside and changed her shirt (since she got breakfast all over the other one) and she took off running and I had to chase her down with the camera.

Cheese!

Howdy Yall!

Giving kisses to the camera

Laughing and about to run away!

Happy Rodeo Day!

Geez!

Ok this is the 3rd time I have tried to change my blog and forgot to save my widgets! Now I have to add all of my links again! I'm so over this stupid thing...seriously. Tonight I am going to attempt to create my own blogger template. We'll see how it goes.

There Are No Words

Valentine's Day

Matt and I don't usually do a lot for Vday and this year was no different. I did have a chance to make some cookies for Sarabeth's MDO class party and I was so pumped! It was my first time to do something for her class and I felt like a real "class mom" :) She came home with a little bag full of valentines from the kids in her class, so cute!I attempted to let Sarabeth make a craft for daddy for Valentines. I let her loose with the paints and she went crazy! They were non-toxic and washable so although it looks like she bleeding from her eye, it's just a lot of paint! The craft never made it, it met it's demise in the trash can.

Crafty chic!

Monkey

Sarabeth is starting to talk so much more. She is great at communicating with us. Most of the time she just points and mumbles but a lot of things she can say. She knows how to say "nose, eyes, ball, mama and daddy, baby, up, bow (like her hair bows), out (for outside) bye bye, yes, no, and oh snap! She is so hilarious. Her new thing is climbing on the kitchen table. I can turn my head and in a few seconds she is on the table! She loves to get in the fruit bowl and take a bite out of everything in it! Every apple has a bite out of it! Yesterday she bit right through a banana, eww!

Baby Mama

I love watching Sarabeth play. She is growing up so fast and doing new things everyday. She will be 16 months on March 1-WOW! She is becoming so much more interactive and starting to actually understand "play". She is so in love with babies, real and dolls. She gathers them up, wraps them in blankets and hugs and kisses them. She tries to feed them whatever she is eating and loves on them just like we love on her. She watches us so closely and mimics a lot of what we do. She is so sweet with her babies! Every day I love her more. I'm enjoying being able to spend most of the days with her. I miss her so much when I have to go into the office :(

Little Mama

MHR Friday-Valentines Edition

Today's post comes from an article Katy Lin posted on her blog. I read it and was convicted instantly! These 10 Secrets to a Successful Marriage are so right! I tried to pick just one to talk about, but I could not decide. I want to talk about how a few of them have affected my marriage.

5. Change your mind, Change your marriage
How couples think and what they believe about their spouse affects how they perceive the other. What they expect and how they treat their spouse matters greatly.

I can't tell you how much I've learned by this. Marriage is definitely a place where you can become selfish and self absorbed. It's easy to think about only what you want and your own feelings. It takes a mature couple to realize they aren't the only one in this. Simply changing your mind about how you feel makes a huge difference. Matt used to always tell me "don't be bothered by that" or "don't let that hurt your feelings". It would always be something trivial and I would get worked up about it and start an argument that left us both wounded. Learning to simply change my mind about the way I let things effect me and the way I felt about Matt in those times changes my marriage dramatically.

6. The grass is greener where you water it
Successful couples have learned to resist the grass is greener myth – i.e. someone else will make me happy. They have learned to put their energy into making themselves and their marriage better.

Oh how I love this one! I learned the hard way what it meant to nurture your marriage. I think the easy way out of a marriage is divorce. The hard part is staying in there and making it. I think some couples believe that if they just had ______, their marriage would be so much better. Whether it be another person or a worldly possession, it's not the truth. Any thing that is hindering you to have a good marriage now, will carry on with you into your next relationship. In order to have a marriage like God intended for us to have, we have to continually nurture the relationship we have with our spouse. Feeding our lives with God's word and surrounding ourselves with godly examples of marriages changed our outlook on our own relationship.

8.Love is a verb, not just a feeling.
Everyday life wears away the "feel good side of marriage." Feelings, like happiness, will fluctuate. But, real love is based on a couple's vows of commitment: "For better or for worse" – when it feels good and when it doesn't.

This is one for Matt. I have to brag on him because this is something he tried to get me to understand for so long. I believe this world over uses the words "I love you". We've heard before the way people can water down this by saying they LOVE _____. (cheeseburgers, race cars, etc). Matt has always said that love has more to do with what you do than what you say. The feelings from the first date eventually go away. The butterflies fly away and the goo goo gaa gaa of love disappears. What remains is the true love that involves work and effort in the yucky times. Matt is excellent and showing me love everyday. He knows my love language and does his best to love in that way. He is usually first to apologize and the last to pick a fight. He sleeps with no covers most of the night, and never says a thing. He fixes breakfast for no special reason, cleans up without me asking, and always asks "what can I do for you today". I can't say enough about how Matt shows his love to me everyday.

This is one thing I need to be better at. I'm one of those who loves to do sweet things for my hubby when life is good, but when life gets bad, forget it! I need to try harder to change my mind and make the choice to show Matt love no matter the circumstance. That is a huge challenge for me, but this week- I'll take that challenge.

You can read the complete list here. Although I had heard many of these before, today they took on a new meaning to me.

These are the cutest shirts! I bought one for Sarabeth, me and Matt. You can get yours here!
You also get free shipping if you mention the Great Adventure Blog with your order. The girl who started the idea of MHR (not the blog) owns this tshirt company. She lives in Humble is an amazing girl with a great marriage story. You can check her story about why she started MHR here.

MHR Friday

Here are Katy Lin's prompts/themes for MHR Friday this week: I picked #1 and #2.

Prompt/Theme for Friday, February 6, 2009 We have a couple of different options for this week: 1. Tell us about some of the things that you and your husband do to just have fun together!

2. Tell the story of a memory about your husband that brings you a smile and a giggle every time you think about it!

3. Give us your best, most creative Valentine's Day gifts (and yes, this one is a shameless way to use your creativity to help me come up with a Valentine's Day gift, lol!) Challenges: ~ Set an appointment with your hubby to have a "goals and dreams" talk as described in the first article. ~ If you already know some of your husbands goals and dreams, be intentional about encouraging him and helping him to reach them.

So...this week was a tough week for us (more on that in another post). There was a lot of tension and silent moments. Last night we decided Matt would make dinner, actually I decided and he agreed. After dinner I offered to make homemade chocolate chip cookies, only because I wanted one! Matt said he wanted to try his hand at making cookies so we ended up making them together. It was so much fun! We don't get together in the kitchen much but this time was really fun and it kind of broke the tension in the air.

Some of the other things we do to have fun is lay around in the floor and listen to music. This started in college and still today we'll put on some music and lay around in the floor and sing along and reminisce.

Most of you that know my husband personally, know how funny he can be. I've posted about his silliness before. Feel free to revisit some of the things we still laugh about till our stomach hurts!

My challenge this week is to have a goals weekend with Matt. We already talked about it earlier this week. We are planning a weekend soon where we can get away and just refocus and set some goals for ourselves as a couple and individually.

I am really enjoying posting about Matt every Friday. It's become something I look forward to and it makes me really see how much he does for me. Even in the bad times, I can find something good about my man! You Rock Babe!