Happy Anniversary to Us!

Two weeks before my first semester in college ended, I found out my financial aid wasn't going to work out as expected. A week later, my high school boyfriend broke up with me. The week after that, I packed, cried, and took finals. As I'm sure you can imagine, it was a bit of a rough time for me.


After deciding not to take out a bazillion dollars in student loans to stay at the college I'd been attending, I moved back home. A few weeks later I met Beej. I can still see him in my mind--cap on backwards, t-shirt, jeans, explaining the rules of a game to a group of friends as we played outside late in the evening. I fell asleep that night thinking, "he's very cute. obviously a leader. and he's a believer." We became friends and 18 months later, we started dating. Thus began our rather long and at times, painful history, which thankfully had a very happy ending! I married my best friend.

Last Friday, we celebrated our 5th anniversary. I remember people telling us before the wedding to try and remember as much as we could because it would go by quickly and become a blur. But, I remember so many details, so well. Which is good, because Beej has a terrible memory for such things. Someone has to be able to tell our kids how we met!


It sounds odd, but we've never given each other anniversary presents before. We both share the mindset that we'd way rather create a memory than get something, so we've always saved our money for our "Anniversary Week Vacation". Every year, a few days after our actual anniversary, we head back to Yosemite (where we spent part of our honeymoon), visit Beej's parents in Fresno, soak up the sun, swim, eat, read and just enjoy each other's company. It's always a lot of fun and something we look forward to all year long. 

But this year, Beej surprised me by showering me with gifts.He came home the night before and gifted me a book. I woke up to a cute card, cash (for whatever my heart desires), and moolah for a cricut--which I have been wanting for a while now. Later, I received another book and a beautiful redwood bud vase because, apparently wood is the traditional gift for celebrating five years of marriage. Who knew?! And I had no gifts for Beej, which, wonderful man that he is, he was fine with because, um...like I said before, we never do that kind of thing.


With our first anniversary, we also began the tradition of driving over Monument. We always get up early enough to catch the sunrise, climbing slowly, winding our way up above the fog. It's always a little windy and cold, but beautiful. We've done this every year, except when we were in Mexico. I love doing this with Beej. I love the idea of 50 years from now us carrying on the same tradition. 


This year we decided to try and catch the sunset up there instead. We didn't want to shake Grace's routine up by waking her so early. You know how it is if you have kids...if they are sleeping, DO NOT wake them up!! So, we grabbed dinner on the go and drove out there. It had been a pretty bad day weather wise, so we weren't sure what'd we'd hit once we got up there.

Can you tell it was really windy and freezing and so foggy we could barely see five feet in front of us?! But it was still fun! We snapped some pics, tried not to scare the cows milling about (they're huge up close! kinda scary!), laughed a lot, prayed together and then hurried back home to curl up, crack open a bottle of wine we've been saving for the last five years and enjoy the rest of our anniversary together. 


We leave early Wednesday morning to kick off this year's Anniversary Week Vacation. Can't wait!!!