On Monday August 9th, Rick and I celebrated our 16th Wedding Anniversary! We remembered a very cool and breezy day in Canada that was ours in 1994 and commented that August in Ontario, Canada is NOT August in southern Ohio. We remembered how excited we were to begin our lives together back then and realized that we have both grown and changed a lot since then, feeling thankful that life usually adds to you just a few new opportunities for growth at one time… and they do add up. The life we have now was not anything we could have successfully handled back then, we are pretty sure.
After reluctantly saying goodbye to my sister, brother-in-law, and nephews with a rough plan to possibly get together for a day again in a couple months, we put our younger children down for naps and left our oldest one in charge. Rick and I went out for a late lunch/early dinner at The Cheesecake Factory; both of us ordering lunch portions of various seafood and chicken pastas after an appetizer of buffalo chicken wraps. The meal had a flair to it that reminded us of being north and of the dinner we shared on the day we married. We then shared a piece of their “anniversary” cheesecake… so delicious!
Returning home just before evening we spent a mostly nice Family Council/Family Home Evening with the kids, though a few of them were pretty tired from slumber partying all weekend with each other and their cousin Greg, all in one room. A game of ladderball out in the yard and some leftover birthday cake for treats, the kids were ready to collapse in their beds.
Once the house was cleaned up from toys, dishes and laundry baskets we shared a few quiet moments together in our candlelit dining area with a bottle of grape juice and some cards with some time to reflect on and look forward to shared adventures. Isn’t life so full of surprises?
Discussing anniversary gifts several weeks ago, we discovered that the official “LIST” of modern and traditional gifts ends at 15 years and jumps to every 5 or 10 year anniversaries after that. So we were left to our own imaginations for the first time. For us, we decided that 16 years meant “large appliance” anniversary and we bought ourselves a dishwasher; a true gift for us both and practically a member of the family after one week of usage! It was almost enough. However, I did spend money on a surprise gift… 2 composition books at $1.00 each. We have realized that we used to write to each other all the time early on in our relationship often leaving post-its on the mirror or scraps of paper tucked into the car wipers and then there were the letters when we were separated by 500 miles. We loved those notes we got from eachother! So we each took the others notebook and wrote a letter in it. It was nice to take the time to write and read and we hope to continue writing to each other in these books as we find it very difficult to have much time together for much of the year with the responsibilities we have and the general busy-ness of having five beautiful children. This is a personal way to communicate even when the other person is busy and it’s not a scrap of paper that gets lost… and it’s practically free! So our notebooks are nearby and we can write or read them whenever we want. It was a nice way to end our evening and begin the next year of our adventures together.
Happy Anniversary! Mmm, cheesecake factory sounds so good. What did their anniversary cake have in it? You looked beautiful that day Heather!
ReplyDeleteAnd great idea on the notebooks. I told Isaac that we're going to do that. I've been thinking for a while how to collect all our little notes and letters into one compilation. I like your idea.