Olive’s Top 5 Reads of 2022

Here we are at the end of 2022. It’s been a good reading year for me – finished 52 books and found many gems along the way. It’s a difficult task to boil it down to 5 top reads, but I will try! (In case you missed it, here’s my list from 2021). I’ll also include a list of honourable mentions at the bottom of this post. I’ve linked the books to Amazon here, purely for convenience of reference. If you’re able to support your local bookstore or get these from your local library, please do so.

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Blue Day Conversation Guide

Early on in our marriage, we realized that most of our everyday conversations were superficial in nature but we didn’t often get around to talking about the deeper things that mattered most to us. We decided to address this by booking off a day to discuss these topics. After all, businesses and organizations have annual planning retreats, why couldn’t we? That’s how Blue Days were invented. Over the 13 years we have been doing Blue Days, many people have asked us what we talk about. We put this post together to outline the topics we cover.

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10 Things Learned in 10 Years of Marriage

Ten years of marriage feels like both a long and a short time. As we prepared to celebrate our first decade of marriage today, we sat down to reflect on some of the lessons we’ve learned along the way. While this isn’t an exhaustive list, it summarizes some of the main things we have learned.

We realize that our readers come from various places in life – some are married, some unmarried, some are struggling with their marriages, some are divorced or separated. Our intention for sharing is to give a glimpse into our relationship and hopefully bring encouragement or invite pondering. We recognize that the marriage we have can only be described as an unmerited gift – an act of grace in our lives. We are fortunate to have supportive family and friends around us and are grateful for their roles in shaping us as individuals so that we could have the marriage that we do.

Three years ago, we wrote 7 Things Learned in 7 Years of Marriage. This year, we’ve created a new list with 10 Things Learned in 10 Years of Marriage:
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11 Reasons to Attend a Marriage Conference

[We recently celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. Thinking back, attending a marriage conference was one of the memories that stood out to us. This is a guest post by our dear friend, Monica Garibay, who incidentally attended the same marriage conference we did.]

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a Christian marriage conference. My husband and I decided to go not because we had a particular problem to solve, or because we were on the edge of divorce. Rather, we saw it as an opportunity to get away and work more on our relationship. I believe that human beings are social beings. However, interpersonal relations are the hardest to keep healthy and strong on a continuous basis unless we make a conscious effort of doing so. When my friends ask my opinion about whether or not attending a marriage conference is worth it, I tell them about my experience.

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7 Things We Learned in 7 Years of Marriage

It’s our anniversary today. Seven years ago we celebrated the beginning of our marriage with friends and family. In the weeks leading to this anniversary we have been reflecting on some of the things we’ve learned about marriage since our wedding day. Here are 7 things we’ve learned in the last 7 years of marriage – most of them in this seventh year.
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Our Favourite Blog Posts from 2013

What a year it’s been! We continue to be humbled that folks like reading our stuff and would actually share our posts with friends. This year, we’ve seen several of our pieces gain an audience and more delightfully, we’ve had the blessing of hearing from and having dialogues with our readers – some of whom we’ve never met.

As we end off 2013, we’ve rounded up our favourite posts from this year. Enjoy!
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