Year Four - Fruit and Flowers

During our fourth year of marriage, Eric began his current job at Ann.e Arund.el Cou.nty Govern.men.t. He began his job with the county and two days after he started there, we had our first child. K entered our lives with screaming, yelling, and a big BANG and she didn’t stop the screaming and yelling for a few weeks. It was a rough period of time for us, but we made it.

On July 3rd, 2003 we celebrated four years of marriage by taking our little 8 month old daughter to Outback Steak house with us for dinner. Then we watched another James Bond movie after she went to bed.

Interestingly enough, my parents were out of town, so my cousin who had been living with them decided to live with us for 2 weeks. She was there with two friends on the night of our anniversary, but they were out quite late so we didn’t even see them. (Remember that Trisha?)

When my parents returned, they kept our little one for the night while we went downtown. We had dinner and caught a comedy act at The Improv. The comedian was hilarious! We laughed all night! Afterwards, we stayed at our own house. It felt great to be there without a child in the house to wake us in the morning.

The traditional gifts for year four are fruit and flowers. Eric bought me this beautiful set of Japanese floral dishes and a honeysuckle body wash. I still love these dishes!!!


I bought him a Hawaiian print shirt (because he had never owned one!!!) and made homemade Sangria to drink while we watched our movie that night. (Sangria has lots of fruit in it…hence the connection to fruit and flowers)

Wordless Wednesday - Happy Fourth!

A happy Fourth of July...




better late than never, right?

Tiny Talk Tuesday

Tiny Talk Tuesday helps parents focus on one of the many joys of parenting - the funny things that our little ones (and sometimes big ones) have to say.

Join in the fun and record the Tiny Talk overheard in your house! Publish a post on your blog and link us to the laughs. Then be sure to link to the blog carnival on this post so more bloggers can join in the fun.

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.
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K (age 6): Every time daddy wears his biking glasses it cracks me up. And then I fall down and go to sleep.
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T (age 4): Soda makes my lips burn but I drink it anyway. And my tongue burns too.
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K (age 6) knows I write things down for my blog on Tuesdays. She was watching C (1 week) and brought me this list...

K: Mom, I wrote down everything C was saying for you! (Then she proceeded to say all of the sounds for me)


(He sure is a noisy little one)
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Your Turn:

Year Three - Leather

Eric completed his masters degree and I completed my math K-12 certification in our third year of marriage. Of course, the most exciting news of the year was learning that I was pregnant with our first child.

We spent our anniversary in Las Vegas on a 10 day vacation before the baby came. (I was 6 months pregnant) While we spent most of our time in Vegas, we also took an excursion for a few days to see the Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, and Sedona. It was an awesome trip.

On our actual anniversary date, July 3, 2002, we were in Las Vegas and had dinner at the Stratosphere hotel. There is a restaurant on top of the hotel with a beautiful view and it rotates slowly in a complete circle while you are dining. Unfortunately I get motion sick and felt quite ill the entire meal. I didn’t eat any part of my delicious steak.

The trip was a blast. We saw Blue Man Group while in Vegas as well as Lance Burton, the magician. We each took $60 to spend in gambling for the entire 7 days. We had a great time with it, especially on the old side of town where there are nickel slots and $.50 minimum roulette tables. It was quite exciting when I hit a jackpot on a nickel machine, earning $75 and then my husband forced me to pick a number at the roulette table and my number hit! Of course, at a $.50 table that is only worth $17.50 but you would have thought I hit the million dollar jackpot. All in all, he lost his $60 and I walked away with $120, which I promptly spent on jewelry in Arizona!

The traditional gift for year three is leather.

Stop giggling. Everyone seems to giggle when the anniversary gift is leather. I can’t imagine why.

I bought Eric a wallet, and I don’t think it has lasted until year 10, but it was practical at the time.

My gift was a pair of leather sandals from American Eagle. I loved those shoes! In fact, I am quite certain they are still in my closet.

Year Two - Cotton

During our second year of marriage, I moved on from teaching at the elementary school level and began teaching middle school math. We also enjoyed our first big family reunion vacation with my family. It is a bi-annual trip to the mountains of NC with all of my mom's family.

That December, my cousin and her husband came to stay with us for awhile and we took them to New York City. We randomly decided to visit the top of the World Trade Center building and are so glad that we did.

On our anniversary date, July 3, 2001 I went to Eric’s office to pick him up for lunch. That evening, he had a soccer game and after the game we went out for snowballs. (sound familiar?)

Of course, our big "overnight" trip was a lot longer than a weekend this year! We took advantage of our pre-kid time in life and headed to Europe for a 3 week tour! Our first stop was London and then we made our way to Greece on a Contiki bus tour. Our other stops included Paris, Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, and Italy (Venice, Rome, Florence, Pompeii). It was a very memorable trip and deserves it’s own blog post one day!

Here we are in Pompeii standing in the doorway of one of the excavated homes:



The second anniversary is traditionally the cotton year. We bought ourselves a cotton quilt to use as a bedspread for the summertime. There are my girls, playing on my bed. It's the best shot I have of the quilt.

It's no longer my taste, and since getting a down comforter 2 years ago the quilt has found a home under our bed in storage. I’ll never get rid of it, but need to find something to do with it. (any suggestions?)

My husband threw in his own little surprise and got me a cotton potholder. I do think it has since been ruined, but served its purpose for a few years!

Our First Anniversary - Paper

Our first year was a fun one. We moved into our first apartment and a few months later we bought our first home! This also meant we experienced our first adventures in home improvement, including wall papering a bathroom. We learned that two Type A’s were going to have some interesting times in home remodeling!

Our anniversary isn’t a convenient weekend to get away. We were married on July 3, which is a holiday weekend. Most places have three night minimums and cost quite a bit on that weekend. Not to mention, it is a holiday that we enjoy being with our family and friends for the events and fireworks. So we typically choose another time to go out of town.

Therefore, on the date of our first anniversary, July 3, 2000, we cooked dinner in our WOK, got snowballs for dessert, and rented a James Bond movie.

The following weekend we went away to the Bavarian Inn in Shepherdstown, WVA. The Inn is located within walking distance to the C&O canal, so we brought our bikes. We spent one of our mornings biking on the C&O. The next day we explored Shepherdstown.

The traditional gift for the first anniversary is paper. I was not in the mode of “sticking to the idea” and I stretched it a bit. I wanted something nice to commemorate our first year, so I choose this wood cabinet.

Because paper is made from trees and trees provide wood.

So in my mind, this pine cabinet worked for the “paper” anniversary. It held our china for a few years and now contains all of my scrapbooks. We’ll always find a use for it and remember it as our first anniversary gift.

My husband, being committed to the rules, got me a small paper gift. This framed picture of a little girl and boy on the beach reminded him of me. It is still hanging in the bathroom in our house and it always will.

Ten Years of Marriage - July 3

When we were engaged, Eric and I asked many married couples what traditions they had started to commemorate their anniversaries. We heard some great ideas, though some sounded more difficult to keep up with. So we sorted through them to pick out the ideas that we felt we could commit to for the long haul.

We decided that we would commit to at least one night away for every anniversary. We realized this would be harder with kids, but had no idea how difficult the logistics could be when you have more than one or two kids. Thankfully, my parents have kicked in and really helped us keep this commitment every year. Some years we had friends pitch in as well or hired babysitters, and every year we have made it work. Thankfully we have usually gotten away for more than one night.

The other idea we adopted was to follow the traditional anniversary gift list. There also happens to be a modern one, but it got expensive really fast. In fact, year 10 was a diamond and I recall at the time (age 21) laughing at that.

“People want to get their diamonds in before their marriages end. That doesn’t seem like you really have weathered things long enough for a diamond yet.”

Of course, now that we are on year 10, a diamond doesn’t sound so bad…

But we’ll stick with the traditional gift of…TIN!

While it sounds a bit nutty, the traditional list has forced some fun creativity over the years. We have enjoyed it and have tried to buy things that will last so that we can look back on them.

In order to commemorate ten wonderful years with my husband, I am going to dedicate the next 10 posts (other than Tiny Talk) to our past anniversaries.

My little walk down Memory Lane begins tomorrow.