This weekend was finally nice: we were in the low 80s for temperatures and we finally had a couple of days without the strong winds that seem to be the standard for this spring.
Since it was Mother’s Day weekend, we treated our resident mother to a nice dinner on the back deck.
We followed this Saturday evening with a new waffle maker and chocolate-raspberry waffles on Sunday morning.
Not pictured: the toddler just to the left of the picture waiting for her food. Yep, romantic indeed…
On Valentine’s Day this year, Brooklynn ended up being sick and Rhiannon left work halfway through the day to take her home. So, my decision to pick up flowers at the last minute from the grocery store on the way home rather than spend a lot of money on some overpriced delivery to her school was completely justified.
Plus, there is something to be said for picking out the flowers yourself, especially when a person manages to get a bouquet that actually looks good a full week later and has all of the blooms open up. Yeah, I’m that good.
I bought these pajamas for Brooklynn when I was out shopping by myself one day. Rhiannon thinks I’m trying to make her look like a boy. My response was “Brooklynn? Where is Brooklynn, because I don’t see her.”
Sometimes Rhiannon and I disagree about what’s funny.
A few weeks ago, we flew in from Portland on a Thursday having been gone since Friday of the week before. My parents had been staying in our house watching Brooklynn, so we had gone for almost a week without seeing her. In fact, that was Rhiannon’s first time away from the baby for a full 24 hours.
And then the next day, my parents took off to go back home and Rhiannon dropped her sister off the airport. Just like that, we were alone again with the baby. And it also happened to be our anniversary.
It seems the typical thing for a married couple with children to do on their anniversary is to get a babysitter or have someone watch said children while they get out on the town. If that’s the case, I guess we had ourselves somewhat of an anniversary week, what with wine tasting, site-seeing, and other generally touristy activities.
Enough that we didn’t really need to go out and live it up too much. Over a year ago, we went out for my birthday to the White Chocolate Grill and managed to only make it through the entree. So, we headed back for desert with Brooklynn in tow. French white chocolate bread pudding it was. And a scoop of ice cream for Brooklynn. We were celebrating, right?
After we put Brooklynn to bed, we watched the complete video of our wedding for the first time. While I was sitting there watching it and thinking of how young a lot of the people in it looked, I also started thinking about the fact Rhiannon and I started dating 11 years ago during the summer.
We made it through five years of college in separate states. We’ve been from the Space Needle in Seattle to Sea World in San Diego to Mayan ruins in Mexico to Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs at Coney Island. We’ve logged more miles than I care to think about driving across the Midwestern states of the country.
We’ve lived in our current home for four years. We’ve put up some bold color on the walls, planted a fair number of flowers (some are even still alive today), and might finally be getting the hang of making the lawn stay green. We’ve made too many cheesecakes, cookies, and pans of kuchen bars than can possibly be good for us.
I don’t know if five years of marriage should be seen as a big achievement. We didn’t get married five years ago any exit strategy in mind. I do know that we wrote our own vows and talked about how we planned to help each other through whatever life may throw at us and support each other through hard times as well as celebrate the good.
(I think a baby fill pretty much all of that at the same time.)
And, watching ourselves as young twenty-somethings talking about a life that we couldn’t have even begun to anticipate, those words in the vows are still true. We’re still trying to find a time to get to Europe like we’ve been talking about for at least the past eight years. We have our fair share of disagreements and misunderstandings. And we’re still very much together and very much in love.
Happy anniversary, Rhiannon.
(Even if it’s a little late.)
Today is Rhiannon’s birthday, which means that once again, she is the same age I am. When we were younger, I wasn’t a huge fan of this – I liked being older (and wiser) and we would celebrate her unofficial birthday the day after mine, at which point I would officially recognize her new age since I would still be a year ahead.
Rhiannon would get a second birthday gift, so she never protested too much about the arrangement.
We are past all of that now. Being another year older is no longer anything to celebrate. In fact, if I could stay right where I’m at (and keep all my hair), I would stop right now. But, apparently life doesn’t work that way, so we are celebrating once again. Rhiannon is the same age as me, and now I just don’t feel quite as old.
I had the day off from work today and took Brooklynn over to school to surprise Rhiannon over lunch. We caught the tail end of her class just before recess (back you tiny flu-laden vermin!) and took a quick tour of the school to show off the baby. Brooklynn even wrote out a card (with a little help) – the first time Rhiannon has gotten anything addressed to “Mom”.
Happy birthday, Rhiannon, from your family. It’s more than just me now. Sorry if it makes you feel aged beyond your years.
(Don’t fret too much. We can be old together.)
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