the luckiest.

Our anniversary was this past weekend. Six years and two kids later I still feel like the luckiest. Lucky to have someone who knows all of my imperfections and loves me anyway. I'm proud of our relationship and the life we've built together. I wrote about how much things have changed since the day we got married at the end of a recent (extremely long) blog post here .

Over these six years (plus four years dating) I've accumulated a box full of lovey-dovey cards from Billy...most of which are from Hallmark. However, we recently decided that none of them truly capture how it actually feels to be married to one another. Billy would always write "I couldn't have said it better myself" in the cards, but that's really not true. Especially since he considers himself to be the one with the superior writing skills out of the two of us. Which I think is cute ;)

At any rate...for that reason, we've agreed to rule out store bought cards when it comes to celebrations of love in our home. We started on Valentines Day of this year. I don't care if its written on the back of a receipt...it just must be from the heart. Its been fun to see what we can come up with using scraps of paper and old pictures...


Another tradition we started this year is involving the kids in our anniversary festivities. We want them to know from an early age that being married takes hard work and commitment but it’s also something that should be celebrated. So each year from now on we'll spend a portion of our anniversary day with our children doing something special.

Here's what we did this year:

We took the boys to the church where we were married. We let Max splash in the fountain in the courtyard and run around the empty pews. Billy and I sat in the front row holding Sullivan looking at the alter where we stood 6 years ago. I thought about the "blessing of the hands" reading we did during the ceremony and the line that says "...these are the hands that will hold your newborn baby..." and was overwhelmed with the way our lives had changed. I realized every part of that blessing was going to come true and we're still at the beginning of it.




After our outing at the church Billy and I went to lunch at the Blue Grotto and to the record store. My very thoughtful sister volunteered to watch Max so Billy and I could spend a little time together. We gratefully accepted. I've learned to say "yes" to any and all the help that we're offered :)

Sullivan came along with us since I'm still nursing on demand. He wasn't much of a third wheel though. We nearly forgot he was there in the booth with us during lunch and I don't think he even opened an eye until we got to our next destination.

As we were searching the stacks of albums for Al Green ("Let's Stay Together" was our first dance song) Sullivan decided it was his turn to eat. I tried to buy us some time by giving him my pinky...



We ended the day with a homemade meal inspired by our engagement dinner at Capital Grill...steak, lobster, risotto and a Stoli Doli martini. We listened to the Elders just like the night we got engaged (not live this time unfortunately).

And we made Sully do an Irish jig for us. Poor child :)

I'm starting to discover that it truly gets better every year.