Letter about an anniversary

Dear readers,

These past few weeks have been full! Mark and I celebrated our 13 year anniversary at the end of June. We usually try to get away for a couple of nights, but were unable to this year because Audra is still nursing, so we took a full *day* together with plans to get way overnight in September.

We headed to one of our favorite little localish towns and poked around in antique stores, ate ice cream, went to a matinee, and had a full days worth of uninterrupted conversation. That, my friends, is a rare treat. :)

We also ate great food. One of my favorite things in life is going out to eat- not just for the discovery of new good food, but because someone else makes me my food, brings it to me, and cleans up after me. And: no one interrupts me to need me to get up and get them a drink, a fork, their sippy cup, or a second helping. No one is throwing food on the floor or crying to get down from their seat because they're done. You get it. I can just sit and revel in the food and conversation and enjoy it. Ahh. For dinner we went to the Outback Steakhouse and I ordered, amongst other things, a side of their Blue Cheese Wedge Salad and have been raving about it ever since. If you've never had that salad, you need to drive to the nearest Outback right now and order it. As I was eating, I memorized the ingredients (lettuce, bacon, tomatoes, blue cheese... Enough said.) and when I got home, I searched online for the dressing recipe so that I could make it here at home and have made it three times in that many weeks. It is scrumptious. And I'm totally serious about you getting to an Outback and ordering yourself that salad.

I just scanned the above paragraph for editing purposes, and am thinking how funny it is that I've just spent a whole paragraph telling you about a salad. If Mark were writing a recap of our day, he'd likely be telling you about the matinee we saw, but not me. No. I'll just talk food.

I've mentioned here before that each year for our anniversary we ask each other questions, as an evaluation of sorts. Sometimes they're specific to marriage, to us, but usually they are just questions like "What area would you like to grow in in the coming year?" This year Mark's question was: "What are you most proud of as you look back on this past year?" and then, "As you look back on this past year, what do you wish you'd accomplished?" Or something along those lines. [Mark, you can clarify in the comments what your questions actually were.] Good stuff.

It was a great day with Mark, and I am so very thankful for my mom who watched our kids all.day.long so that we could get away. This was the longest I'd ever been away from Audra, and of course she did great. When we're away for any length of time, we guess what the kids' reactions will be when we get back. We're usually spot on. Audra shrieked with glee and then wanted me and would not let go for anything. Adelia hollered mommy! and daddy! and ran over to us. Isaias ran over to hug our legs. Isaac, we guessed, would be playing Legos and be bummed that us being home meant that he would not have time to finish whatever he was building. And Ella just crawled into Mark's lap and wanted to go home. So we did. Because I needed to find the recipe for The Salad.

When I began this post-that-is-a-letter, I planned to fill you in on our last couple of weeks. Me in all my chatter only got through detailing a single day.

Lovely.

In a nutshell: I turned 35 last week and that was great. I've been doing school planning for next year (in which I'll have a child in Kindergarten, one in first grade, and one in third grade. Oh my.) and I'm REALLY excited about many things and can't wait to share them here, when I get some more time. I think that's all.

I hope you're having a wonderful day and enjoying as much sunshine as we are here! Our week has been full of backyard fun: splashing in the kiddie pool and eating meals on the patio, hanging clothing on the line to dry, mowing, sidewalk chalk and painting. And me, looking at our vegetable garden every day and wishing someone else would come and weed it. I'm still waiting. I just don't have it in me to get up and do it myself.

Blessings to each and every one of you!

~Stacy