5 Years!

April 9th, 2005 was a cloudy day, but still, it was a perfect day. It was the day I got married. I married my best friend. I loved him. I still love him, I love him even more. I never imagined that that life could get any better. But it has. These past 5 years were not perfect years, but my love for this man has grown more than I could ever imagine it would or even could.

I have heard many times that we should not expect to "Find" our soul mate, but I think that God made Ken for me, he sent him to me and at the right time he let Ken in on the secret, that he (Ken) really should love me. Why do I think this? Well, Ken was my friend, and I liked him, you know, I "liked him" liked him, but he really didn't feel that way about me. He was a great friend and so I overlooked that little flaw and we had a lot of fun being friends. Then one day Ken met a girl and I knew that she must be the one, I was heart broken, I don't think I really understood how much I liked him until then. It was at that time that I gave up hope and I prayed and asked for a Miracle, I prayed that God would make me not like Ken Wheeler, then I cried myself to sleep. The next morning I woke up and I didn't hurt anymore, but strangely I still liked Ken. I figured God did what he could do, he took away the pain in my heart and that was good enough for me. To my surprise, that girl I was sure was his "One" was not. A few months later Ken completely changed his mind about not liking me, and he asked me out. That was in the Fall of 2004, we were engaged on December 30th of that year and then Married in April. So do you see what I see? God knew! He wouldn't give me what I asked for, he didn't take away my love for Ken, he knew that I would need it later.

And Oh Boy, do I love this man. That was a great day and Today was a pretty great day too.

These are my Anniversary Roses! Best part about them, they were on Clearance for $2.50! Can you say Budget Friendly! And yes, it is a full dozen.
So here is the story of this years anniversary. I think it is a pretty good story. A few years ago we picked up an Anniversary Inn Gift Certificate at Costco. We had previously enjoyed pretending that we were in the South Pacific and Pirates from Treasure Island at the Anniversary Inn and the Gift Certificate was a great deal, it was 50% off their most expensive rooms. Then we put the Gift Certificate in a drawer and there it stayed, we always said that we would use it someday, but we never made plans. Until last weekend. I realized that Ken was taking the day off for our Anniversary and I started hatching a plan. I wanted to go somewhere, I thought about Bear Lake or Wolf Creek, but Ken thought it might be easier to stay closer to home. Our plan worked perfectly, Ken thought it would be great to use our Anniversary Inn Gift Certificate and so I got to work planning our get away. I decided on a room that I thought looked Amazingly Luxurious, rather than really fun (because how can you beat a Pirate Ship?). Prices had gone up since we got our gift certificate so we were going to pay $25 for our room, but $25 for a $250 room is pretty darn good, so we booked it. It was easy.

We found an over night sitter for Little J. I was scheduled to work yesterday but I thought that J would have a hard time, spending all day at a babysitter only to spend an hour or less with Mom and Dad before another sitter arrived and Mom and Dad left again. So I moved work to Wednesday and I was able to spend a delightful, pretty much perfect day with my J. I even managed to clean 90% of the house, everything was working out so well, until the babysitter called. She couldn't make it on time for us to leave, and she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to come at all. She is a good friend of ours and her reason for the delay and possible cancellation was a scary one, I told her I completely understood and that I would work to make temporary arrangements for someone to watch J until she could get here and possibly find someone who could watch him all night if needed. WOW! My Perfect day was suddenly feeling a lot more stressful.

I must tell you, I live in an AMAZING neighborhood. We found someone, quite quickly, who was willing to watch J for a few hours, in fact they could watch him until the next morning if they needed too. I had two possible back up's that could pick him up that night, (thanks Mom) or possibly the next morning (once again, great neighbors) and only 30 minutes behind schedule, Ken and I were off to celebrate our Anniversary. I called our original Babysitter, and told them where J was and that we hoped that all turned out all right and they told us they would call as soon as they knew if they would be able to pick him up from the temp sitter. Miraculously by the time we got Downtown they had called us back to tell us that everything was fine and that they were on their way to pick up little J. Plans were back on track and we were ready to check in at the hotel, knowing our sweet boy was being well cared for, we were really really ready to relax.

Not much better than a really nice hotel room, with a big bed (it had steps to help you get in!) and a big tub, and yes a big screen TV (I made sure that was there for Ken- love you sweetie). I tried to take some pictures but none of them really did the room justice, but here is a picture of the chandelier- imagine the room that that belongs in (remember big 4 poster bed..... columns around the big tub..... yeah, it was nice)

Oh, and I almost forgot, remember that $25 that we were going to have to pay? Well, as we were checking in Ken asked the clerk about a special he had seen on their website, they were offering a discount if you stayed a 2nd night (50% for the second night), and if you couldn't stay they would give you $25 off your room for the first night plus Popcorn, 2 boxes of candy and 2 drinks! The clerk did some adjusting to our bill and gave us our credit card back saying "Well, your total is now 0.78 cents, so if it is alright with you, I won't put that on your card." We didn't have 78 cents to physically give her, and she laughed and said it would be OK, they would just write it off. So, once again budget saving, our room was free! YEAH! (free this year because we paid for it years ago).

We decided that 5 years from now we would take another Anniversary trip, this time for 2 days. So, anyone want to babysit 2, maybe 3 kids for a couple of days in April 2015?