Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday was our 15 year anniversary.  It's kind of hard to communicate with anyone else what it's the anniversary OF...it wasn't our first date, or our engagement, or...that...  May 1, 1997 was the night of the Sammy Awards.  I won a Sammy that night, which is actually a fun blog post for another day.  Carlton actually took me home, I think, or maybe just drove me to my car.  Anyway, I went home.  James called me that night and said two things I'll never forget:  1.  that I looked like an angel that night (he'd never seen me dressed up before...I thought this line was kind of cheesy but then I realized this guy was speaking from the heart and I was so touched) and 2. that he didn't want to date anyone but me.  We didn't hang up the phone and head straight for marriage and live happily ever after, but May 1st has always been a very special day for us.  For me, personally, May 1st kind of overshadows our wedding anniversary, which is May 9th.  (Don't be confused next week when I tell him happy 13!)

Anyway, this was meant to be a quick, how we spent our evening post.  But I figured I ought to explain a bit about why May 1st is a big deal to us.  Here's something else you might not know:  we are not here by accident.  By here, I mean in Washington County.  We loved, loved living in Huntsville (we're both from Houston).  Sometimes on the weekends, especially during bluebonnet season, we'd drive over to Brenham and/or Washington on the Brazos.  Huntsville feels like a whole different part of Texas, even though it's not too far away, with all of the pine trees.  We loved Washington County, and just driving over here felt like a vacation.  I have so many great memories of Washington on the Brazos, especially--and more than one memory of driving over to Chappell Hill for the Bluebonnet Festival, a week late.  Whoops.  Someday I'll tell you about the friends Sami made at Washington on the Brazos while James and I were busy talking.  After we got married and moved back to Houston, this was still a favorite day trip.

When I got pregnant with Kayci, we agreed that our goal was to raise her in a smaller town...either Huntsville or Brenham.  A couple of, shall we just say challenging and wonderful, years later, he got the job at Germania.  And here we are!

So, James was out of town ALL last week.  That's unusual for us.  It was a great week for me and the kids, surprisingly, but weird without James.  I decided to surprise him and get a babysitter so we could go out and celebrate our anniversary.  I thought we'd do what we usually do when we get a babysitter--go have a nice (quieter than usual) dinner somewhere and go to a movie.  But I didn't really want to do that, I just wanted to spend time with my Boy.  So then I had an even better idea:  a grown-up picnic at one of our favorite places in the world.

We stopped at the only restaurant in Washington (I forgot forks!) and bought desserts so we could get plastic forks...and we wanted to support their small business, of course.  We got to the park about 5, and we were the only people there (I'm sure there was someone working, somewhere, but we never saw them).  We weren't sure where we wanted to set out our blanket, but when we got to the overlook we saw the perfect spot.




We climbed down and sat our blanket out on the bluff.  It was quiet and beautiful and absolutely perfect.  (We heard people exactly twice while we were there...we felt like the only people in the world for a couple of hours.)




After we ate I laid back for a while to watch the clouds roll by...until a beetle flew into my dress.  And that was that.




I cheated and bought some grown-up picnic food at HEB.  I didn't make anything.  And I totally used this as an excuse to buy an insulated bag/cooler since I've admired Heather's so often.  :)  Wait 'til you see it--it's awesome!




Dinner was yum-my.  It wasn't pretty, but it tasted good.  And we were totally starving as it really was just snack food, so I was grateful for the bread pudding.  OH!  And since it's me?  We had Strawberry Hill in a Sonic cup.  Classy!




Other than using my phone to take these pictures, we unplugged for the 4 hours of our date.  I think we might make that a weekly date...the unplugged part.  It was nice!

So there it is...the anniversary where we celebrated by doing NOTHING.  It was exactly what we needed to recharge and head into another week of crazy.  :)  And, it was exactly something we would have done 15 years ago, which made it perfect.

Happy 15, Boy.  It's been a great adventure!