Quarterly Review #6

This is the last post on quarterly reviews. I would like to thank Danny and Laura for sharing their marriage with all of us. It is our hope that you have found encouragement for your marriage. May God bless you.

Welcome to guests writers Danny and Laura Stiller

OUR FAVORITES & WHY

By Laura Stiller

Laura's Favorite Quarterly Reviews:

Camping at Myrtle Beach - I LOVED this quarterly review because we didn't have a schedule or agenda. Our only goals were to eat, play together on the beach, rent a tandem bicycle and read. In fact, the second day of our quarterly review was spent entirely on the beach playing in the water, reading under an umbrella, talking whenever we felt like it, and eating snacks.

PREP Marriage Video Series - This was a very simple quarterly review. We rented a cabin with a TV and DVD player in "The-Middle-of-No-Where," Oklahoma. We packed all of our own food so we wouldn't have to leave, and we just hung out there for two nights. We watched the PREP dvd series and even took the time to practice the communication techniques they taught. It's alot hard to apply these in real life, in the middle of a fight - but this dvd series gave us communication tools and techniques for working through arguments/differences that we will use for the rest of our lives.

Danny's Favorite Quarterly Reviews:

Christmas Parade in Gatlinburg, TN - Danny likes this quarterly review because it was cold, Christmassy and there was fake snow all over this city and in the Christmas parade! He also enjoyed our drive through the Smokey Mountain National Park and stopping to play in the river.

Kerrville Kayaking - This was just a relaxing camping weekend where Danny enjoyed getting on the river and watching the sunset.To read about all of our quarterly reviews, click here.

Danny and Laura Stiller were married on August 27, 2005. They fell in love while leading an inner city ministry together after college in Bryan, Texas. Two weeks before their wedding, while Laura was busy finalizing wedding plans and dreaming of marital bliss, Danny decided they needed to move to Greenville, SC for a better job opportunity and to pay off debt FASTER. Somehow, during their first two years of marriage, they moved four times, and squeezed there in the middle was a year in Columbia, SC and the Harris' newlywed Sunday School class. They are now half-way through the four years it takes to get a Masters of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, and are maintaining their sanity with date nights, quarterly reviews, and lots of hearty "communication." They blog regularly at: thestillers.blogspot.com.

Quarterly Review #5

Welcome guest writers, Danny and Laura Stiller

SPECIFIC QUARTERLY REVIEW IDEAS
by Laura Stiller

Each of our quarter reviews look different (I'll get to specific quarterly review ideas in a minute), but this has kept them fresh and fun for us. Some of our trips have been strictly for play. Any talk of our marriage just flows, it's not structured or planned. Some of our weekend trips have been fully structured complete with an agenda, discussion topics and intentional questions - sometimes even with homework (or books to read BEFORE the quarterly review in preparation for a discussion).We've needed both of these at different times in our marriage. Danny has been stellar at discerning what types of things to plan for our quarterly reviews and deciding what kind of tone our week needs to take.Let me give you a few suggestions. Please keep in mind that each marriage/couple is vastly different, so part of what will make quarterly reviews beneficial for you is how you tweak and customize them to your needs and personalities. Free/Cheap Activities:
tubing
outdoor movie
camp out
find a local event
rent a tandem bicycle
go back to places with memories
watercolor
go site-seeing with your camera - take pictures together (this is on our "to-do" list)

To Foster Deep Conversation:
attend a marriage conference
plan your future together by reverse engineering your life
take & discuss temperament spiritual gifts, leadership and/or personality tests
watch the PREP Marriage Video Seriesexplore career goals/dreams together

Sample Discussion Questions:
What has been the biggest adjustment being married?
What has been the hardest struggle in our marriage?
What have you struggled with personally since getting married?
What has been most unexpected thing about marriage?
What has been the biggest blessing since getting married?
What do you want to focus on/improve next quarter (marriage & personally)?
Things we've learned since getting married. What's your spiritual life been like this quarter? What are some things you've prayed for this quarter?
What are some ways that I have (and maybe currently do) hurt you?
What can I do so that I don't hurt you anymore.
Establish some "Action Steps" for building/maintaining intimacy (in anticipation of a busier semester).
Write down 10 things that make you feel loved.
What are our spiritual, physical, emotional, social and intellectual goals for the next Quarter? What have our challenging/stressful circumstances been this quarter & how can we relieve the stress? (ie: packing lunches, planning menus, doing laundry, etc.)
What are our prayer needs this quarter (because if we don't feel like we need God then we won't go to Him)?
What is the most humanly impossible thing you'll ask God to do this year?
Where are some places we'd like to try to go on future quarterly reviews? (ie: Grand Canyon, West Coast, New Orleans - we dream big folks)
What did we accomplish this quarter that we had set as goals last quarter?
What's improved in our relationship this quarter?
And that, my new friends, is the book The Stillers have written for themselves on Quarterly Reviews since sitting on a worn leather couch the summer of 2005. It is still being written, with many editions to come.

Danny and Laura Stiller were married on August 27, 2005. They fell in love while leading an inner city ministry together after college in Bryan, Texas. Two weeks before their wedding, while Laura was busy finalizing wedding plans and dreaming of marital bliss, Danny decided they needed to move to Greenville, SC for a better job opportunity and to pay off debt FASTER. Somehow, during their first two years of marriage, they moved four times, and squeezed there in the middle was a year in Columbia, SC and the Harris' newlywed Sunday School class. They are now half-way through the four years it takes to get a Masters of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, and are maintaining their sanity with date nights, quarterly reviews, and lots of hearty "communication." They blog regularly at: thestillers.blogspot.com.

Quarterly Review #3

Welcome guest writer, Laura Stiller (see previous quarterly review posts)

WHY DO QUARTERLY REVIEWS?

by Laura Stiller

After 3 1/2 years of marriage, 14 quarterly reviews and countless date nights, our rendezvous every three months have taken on various shapes and forms. Regardless of where we go or what we plan, each quarterly review is a time for us to get away from the routines of normal, everyday life; spend focused time just with each other; and communicate. Sometimes, when we are in the middle of several particularly stressful or tiring weeks, it's just enough boost to know that we already have the next quarterly review on the calendar. It also helps me to know that if something in our marriage is not functioning just right (our schedule, our jobs, our commitments, our meal planning, whatever) that we have a weekend planned specifically geared towards tweaking and improving things. Quarterly Reviews give me hope that our marriage will not get stuck in a rut. I don't ever want to wake up one morning and ask myself, how did I get here? How did things get this bad in our marriage? Could we get stuck in a quarterly review rut, where they are no longer serving their purpose - of course, but we are praying against any kind of "ruts" in our marriage.

Danny and Laura Stiller were married on August 27, 2005. They fell in love while leading an inner city ministry together after college in Bryan, Texas. Two weeks before their wedding, while Laura was busy finalizing wedding plans and dreaming of marital bliss, Danny decided they needed to move to Greenville, SC for a better job opportunity and to pay off debt FASTER. Somehow, during their first two years of marriage, they moved four times, and squeezed there in the middle was a year in Columbia, SC and the Harris' newlywed Sunday School class. They are now half-way through the four years it takes to get a Masters of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, and are maintaining their sanity with date nights, quarterly reviews, and lots of hearty "communication." They blog regularly at: thestillers.blogspot.com

Quarterly Review #2

Welcome guest writer Laura Stiller. She and her husband are sharing with us the concept of a Marriage Quarterly Review. Please also see previous post.

Quarterly Review #2

By Laura Stiller

Danny and I (Laura) first heard about "Quarterly Reviews" during our pre-marital counseling in College Station, Texas. We sat next to each other on a brown leather couch and listened as our pastor told us we needed to have weekly date nights, quarterly get-aways, and yearly anniversary celebrations. Well, I wasn't going to argue with the idea that we needed to go stay in a hotel every three months, and Danny, being ever analytical and introspective, loved the thought of analyzing and refining our marriage.We knew no one else who did "quarterly reviews, there was no blueprint to follow, so, after twelve short weeks of marriage, we set out to make up some stuff on our own. Danny made hotel reservations in Raleigh-Durham, and we decided we'd sip coffee at Barnes & Noble while "analyzing" our marriage. Now, you must know something about us, we cannot walk into Barnes & Noble without each first gathering a huge stack of books to peruse. Well, Danny blew my expectations for our first quarterly review right out of the water when he walked back to the cafe with a HUGE stack of sex books. Great. And I thought we were going to talk about "things we learned since being married" or "things we'd like to improve in our marriage." I guess I had my answer from Danny without any further discussion.Over the next few blogs I want to explain a little bit of why we do quarterly reviews, how we plan for our quarterly reviews (including some practical suggestions you can do yourself), and finally share some of our favorite quarterly reviews to date.

Danny and Laura Stiller were married on August 27, 2005. They fell in love while leading an inner city ministry together after college in Bryan, Texas. Two weeks before their wedding, while Laura was busy finalizing wedding plans and dreaming of marital bliss, Danny decided they needed to move to Greenville, SC for a better job opportunity and to pay off debt FASTER. Somehow, during their first two years of marriage, they moved four times, and squeezed there in the middle was a year in Columbia, SC and the Harris' newlywed Sunday School class. They are now half-way through the four years it takes to get a Masters of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, and are maintaining their sanity with date nights, quarterly reviews, and lots of hearty "communication." They blog regularly at: thestillers.blogspot.com.