5 years and counting

Five years ago I married a man who was more wonderful than I could have imagined. I thought he was fabulous when we were engaged, I learned that he was truly amazing once we were married, and now that we've had a few years to grow I know that he couldn't be more perfect for me. Not perfect (have to throw that in there for reality's sake, and just so that he won't think I'm lying about everything else) but closer than I deserve, and my true love. Or, "sweet love" as my neice once called me before we got married. She said those were the best two words you could put together, and that's what WH has been calling me since then.

I was thinking about it just now, and we've only had one anniversary out of five where I wasn't pregnant or had a newborn. This year, we have a 7 month old who we are leaving with family so that we can go away to our honeymoon cabin for the weekend. We thought about taking him, but he is just about to start crawling, and he's getting to be less of a baby that you just park somewhere. He wants to be entertained. At one point WH said, "If we took him it would be a really sweet time to spend with just him." Then he smiled and said, "Hmmm, guess that's not really the point of an anniversary trip, huh?" But knowing he was willing and even happy to have the baby come along made me love him all the more.

At the very beginning we decided to take turns planning our anniversary celebrations. The first year he planned, the second year I planned, and so on. We haven't always gone away, depending on our circumstances. One year we didn't even go out to dinner until July, but that's life. We also watch our wedding video every anniversary, just for kicks.

So here we are, then and now. All my wedding pictures are on a disk somewhere deep in a box, so all I have is us, a week before we got married:

And on our honeymoon (look how young-and thin- we look!!!):

First anniversary- We went to a dumpy little cabin found on the internet. Made us both grateful our honeymoon cabin was so fabulous...we obviously did not have the same luck here. There was a hot tub but the hot water heater was so small that in order to fill it we had to boil water. Both of us had gained about 30 lbs, and I was close to giving birth to baby #1 (sympathy weight?). He also had pretty bad heartburn along with me. Very empathetic husband.

Second anniversary- Trip to Lexington, VA where we stayed in a fabulous bed and breakfast. It was wonderful. We left Coop with WH's Mom, but it was only for a night. Not a great picture...it's all we've got.

Third anniversary- WH planned a fun evening out where we went to four different places, working off the theme of "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue." It was a lot of fun. No pictures...I always take my camera to these types of things but often forget to pull it out. Here we are a few weeks later:



Fourth anniversary- Some good (great!) friends in town watched the two older kids (I was pregnant with Baby T) and we had about 20 hours to ourselves. I made a little "Choose your own adventure" booklet and WH had about four different options for how we would spend our time. We ended up going out for a nice dinner, coming home to watch our wedding video (although by this year we both had a magazine while we were watching it), slept in and had a lazy breakfast, and then went to the art museum before picking up our kids.

Fifth anniversary- We'll be dropping our kids off Friday morning and won't be returning until Sunday night. It's the longest we've been by ourselves in over four years. Can't wait! God is good.