Celebrating 15 Years of Marriage

Our 15 top moments - and the advice for new couples behind them

Recently, we celebrated our fifteenth wedding anniversary. During our 10th anniversary, we had just started Mind The Beet and we penned a Q&A on our first decade. This time, we jointly picked the top 15 moments over the past 5,475 days and the meaning we found in each moment.

We wrote this as a note to any young couple just starting their life together, interweaving what each moment meant to the life we’ve built together.

💍 The Wedding

Like many couples, our wedding was one of the first major events we planned together. We discovered that these traditions are not just for us and our moment - but for our family and an excuse for far flung friend groups to come together in that critical mid-20’s time of life. We were intentional about what was important to us and tried to stay true to those intentions in big and small decisions.

Our wedding reflected this balance as best as we knew how. We were married on the UCLA campus, where we met, with an after-party at In-N-Out Burger. We incorporated our family’s traditions that resonated with us while writing our own vows and creating a ceremony that was meaningful to us and our guests. We were focused on celebrating us as well as our family and friends who shaped so much of who we were (and continue to be). So we incorporated quirky things that brought whimsy and inside jokes to life (like our program was created as our school newspaper).

✈️ The Honeymoon

Something they don’t tell you is that the honeymoon is partly an excuse to recover from the stress of the wedding – something just for us without competing priorities and opinions. It was also a chance to define what travel meant to us and how we wanted to balance relaxation, learning, and exploration in equal measure.

We had a two part honeymoon – first a trip right after the wedding to the Caribbean, where Helen was certified to scuba dive (Adam was already certified), and then six weeks all over central and Western Europe.

This was a long time to be away from the office (Helen was in between her MBA and her new job, but for Adam it required special permission). It was the start of a tradition to “take your retirement along the way” that we’ve carried on through the 15 years - be it parental leaves, career breaks, or sabbaticals. We’ve invested a lot in thinking about what “time off” means:

⛰️ The Hobby

Shared hobbies are an important part of life for newly married couples. For us, we leaned into the default weekend pastime of the Pacific Northwest – hiking. It allowed us to build a friend group and continue the theme of exploration that we had on our honeymoon.

We added a goal to the hobby - “bagging” certain peaks including Mt. St Helens and Mt Rainier (in our first attempt, we were unable to summit due to the weather and only Adam summited on the second attempt as Helen was pregnant). We even finalized on the name of our first-born child on a hike at Crater Lake - pictured here:

🏠 The House

Buying a house was the first truly major decision of long-term consequence that we made together as a couple.  Location, size, fixer upper vs. spec home, painting colors and so many other small decisions that while small individually, together set up our path. We wanted to have a home that welcomed friends and family and where we could easily entertain. We loosely thought about it being suitable for kids (schools, playgrounds) but like so much of having kids, it was hard to envision what we’d need ahead of time. “Be ready to see yourself in your first home for 5 - 7 years” was the guidance we got from our real estate agent and indeed, we lived in that home for six years before we grew out of it.

We’ve since moved on from our first home.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 The Kids

Most marriages are divided into “before kids” and “after kids.” And there is no way to prepare for this milestone.

Our first child was born over 12 years ago. It’s hard to really explain the magnitude of this event and how it shaped us. The best analogy we came up with is moving to a new city and not speaking the language. Becoming parents together helped us solidify our united front (to both the kids and to family/friends with advice). It helped us grapple with our best and worst traits in ourselves and gave us the most important job and privilege of raising good humans.  

Check out Adam’s article on the first year of fatherhood:

🤝 The Community

Nothing highlights the need for and importance of a proverbial village like starting a family while being a flight away from your parents and family support system. We figured out early on that we were going to need to build the support system that addresses the modern family construct (we were older when we had kids, with more means but less time and less built in support).

In the earliest days of parenting, the first community we became a part of was our PEPS group. It was a group of parents in our neighborhood who had a firstborn child in the same 6-week period as we did. It was a group of 6 other families - all under slept and bewildered about this new chapter. 

A vivid memory I (Helen) have is showing up to a meeting - Adam was traveling while I was on maternity leave - the baby was crying and I was exhausted. Immediately, one of the parents took the baby from me and soothed her while a plate of food appeared in my hands. That first year is such a blur - but the things I remember is not feeling alone because of this community.

Check out Helen’s take on how to build the parenting village:

🔁 The Traditions

It is with a little bit of age and perspective that the importance of traditions has crystallized for us. We were intentional with building our unique family ones while also maintaining our childhood ones.

Our family tradition is to host Thanksgiving and decorate for the winter holidays immediately after. We also send out annual holiday cards and display our family card every year on our fireplace mantel.

At the same time, we continue to celebrate Christmas and New Years with our parents, honoring traditions that are most important to them. Adam’s family does a Christmas Eve dinner out and hosts a Christmas Day dinner with close friends. Helen’s family does a New Year’s dress up/themed party on New Year’s Eve and then sits down for formal dinner on January 1st.

This bridge of our family traditions gives life certain structure that we have come to appreciate and build upon - and is a gift we are giving our kids.

Every year, we add one new thing to our Christmas village - above is last year’s “drone shot” of the village.

🌲 The Refuge

We’ve learned over the years how much location matters to our life together - as careers brought us away from family, friends scattered throughout the world, and places - be it our home, visiting parents, or special vacation spots – brought us meaning.

After our first kid was born, we invested in a finding a second home - a place away from the day to day yet still close enough for a weekend visit. We were feeling isolated by the early kid’s bedtime - we felt like we could never hang out with anyone past 6PM anymore – so we prioritized a place big enough to host a second family with us.

This space became so much more than a second home - it also is a place where we have created a community that we cherish and where we have established an additional set of traditions. It is also a place where a different side of us has space to come out - Helen learned how to sew and quilt and Adam learned more about what it takes to maintain a 5-acre property.

We were nervous to get a second property for the additional work and headache, and we wondered if we’d use it enough or if this would make us feel guilty about taking vacations. While all valid things to think about, it has always been a welcome change of scenery from the daily life.

Adam uses the snowplow to create “snow mazes” for the kids in the cabin’s backyard.

😷 The Pod

Your marriage may not involve a global pandemic right as your kids were starting their education, but ours did. Among many other takeaways, for us the pandemic was a lesson in resilience and finding our own sense of control no matter the situation. Keeping calm and finding the bright side of any situation is now something we pride ourselves on.

How we did that during the pandemic was returning to a sense of community. After the schools closed, we gathered together with four other neighborhood families to form a “pod” - hiring a shared teacher (well, “joining the classroom Teams call” facilitator, really) and coming together for shared experiences like Halloween parties.

Community is what you create, no matter the situation.

Uncut hair and homemade facemasks - those were the days.

🏝️ The Vacations

The end of the pandemic was when we got serious about family travel - one “epic trip a year” is our mantra. The end of the pandemic also aligned with the ages of our kids where travel seemed more enjoyable and doable. Lots of families start serious travel earlier but approximately around ages 5 and 8, made sense to us.

Our approach to travel is to be intentional about what each person in our family needs for the trip to be successful. So when we take a big trip to a new country, we design it so that there is epic fun mixed in with cultural exploration. For example, when we visited Paris, there was a pop up summer fair in the Tuileries gardens and the kids got tickets to the amusement rides every evening after we came back from museums or other cultural exploration. We also do smaller trips periodically that are “pure fun” trips – Disneyland and Hawaii come to mind - and we believe that there should be time and space for both.

🎉 The Birthdays

Birthdays have been a great excuse for us to get our families together (especially since they don’t live in the same cities) - and we used them as reasons to celebrate life, health, friends and family.

In our fifteen years of marriage - we’ve had two big ones: for Adam’s 40th, we took on a trip to the UK - where we met up with our best friends (living currently in London), friends from high school as well as our parents who made the trip to celebrate. For Helen’s 40th, we ended up with a 50-person mini-wedding but with a massive kids table where we danced the night away. Both events helped us make memories and not wait for a wedding (or a funeral) to see people we love.

The book that inspired us is Die with Zero by Bill Perkins which basically encourages you to spend resources when you can get the maximum joy out of it.

Helen’s 40th birthday party

🧑🏼‍💻 The Careers

Supporting each other’s career has been a defining part of our marriage.

The one thing our careers have had in common is that we don’t feel trapped by them. We work the jobs and the roles we work as long as they work for us and when things start to feel off, we adjust and pivot.

We’ve both taken very different paths to achieve that growth and evolution. For Helen, that has meant changing roles, companies and careers throughout her time in the workforce. That level of change is what it takes for her to stay relevant and excited. For Adam, it has been driving change within a large organization and building deep expertise, while continuously learning and re-inventing himself on the job.

There were moments when our careers accelerated and moments when they stalled - we try not approach it as a “ladder” but rather focus on catching the right waves - zooming out to think in decades to figure out what matters and what doesn’t.

🏘️ The Neighborhood

As the kids got older, our community has centered around the neighborhood - especially the school community. For us, it’s provided so much support that we’ve learned to lean on.

A year ago, our dog swallowed a pair of AirPods. As I (Helen) frantically texted my PTSA co-president that we have to move our meeting because I need to go to the vet, she showed up with a homemade remedy while another PTSA person came with a bottle of wine and a third came over with tea to offer moral support. In this moment, I knew that we had a community in the neighborhood - a backstop in hard times and a support network in good times.

We have chosen to invest in our neighborhood by inviting people into our homes for our annual gatherings (a back-to-school party and our annual holiday dessert competition). These have really turned into neighborhood events over the years, and we pride ourselves at being at the center of these traditions.

The neighborhood kids at our annual dessert competition.

🐾 The Dog

If you are going to get a dog after you have kids, get one when your whole family is invested in it and not a day sooner.

We always knew that we would get a dog – eventually. The debate came on the right time and just as with the debate on when to have kids, there doesn’t seem to be a great time to introduce one more thing into our busy life to take care of. Because we didn’t have a dog as a couple before we got married, we ended up waiting for our kids to be old enough to want a dog and to be able to participate in training, playing and caring for the animal.

We succumbed when our kids made a PowerPoint presentation outlining the benefits of getting a pet, did research to understand which breed would work for our family and were willing to sign a contract that stated they would both be willing to pick up dog poop.

A dog is a lot of work, but he has completed the family and has brought more joy to our family than we could have imagined.

📝 The Blog

Whatever your path is, find a way to keep your marriage interesting - working on a project together (other than raising kids) has helped us stay connected and turn toward each other in addition to having our own hobbies and interests.

Starting Mind the Beet came at one of the first moments that we felt like we were coming up for air from the period of pure child rearing + work life surviving. As a moment opened up, the question we pondered is how we might spend our time on something less transactional than everyday chores and responsibilities. So writing together became a project we poured our extra energy into.

In Conclusion

We are so lucky to have role models in our parents who have been married collectively for almost a century - they have shown us what it’s like to have marriages of mutual respect, resilience, and perseverance.

Thank you for reading and since you got all the way here, here is a video montage we put together for people who solved the riddle in our wedding invitation: