Lucky 7

Sunday marked our 7th wedding anniversary. And can I just say, I really, really do love my husband more with each year we are married. He is an amazing man!

Last Thursday, we decided that since we were coming up on 7 years of marriage, it was high time that we bought a real dining room table (one that could seat more people and on which you could keep the food being served-- y'know, passing the dishes and all). We also decided it was high time to buy something to display the china in that we got 7 years ago for our wedding. So we headed to Ikea. And after a little bit of sweat, but no blood or tears, we now have this:

The table seats 8 right now, but has two leaves and could comfortably seat 12. One side is a bench, which Cate loves. I love the china cabinet and the fact that our china is actually out of the boxes!

On Saturday, we spent some time as a family at the City Flea (a once a month summer flea market downtown). Calling it a flea market really isn't fair as flea market sometimes denotes "crap" or "junk." There were vendors selling vintage and new goods as well as handmade items. Cate got a pair of Son of Gustav moccasins (she LOVES them) and a little hand-sewn bird. She picked a pair to match Brennan's, which means Brennan will inherit them in a few years. We found Brennan a vintage shirt for next summer (can't wait to pair it with khakis) and his own moccasins.

Saturday night, Eric's parents watched the kids so Eric and I could head to dinner at The Melting Pot. I'd never been, but my IRL friend, Mama Marchand, talks about it a lot and goes there with her husband to celebrate special things, so we thought we'd give it a try. It. Was. Amazing. We had a four-course fondue meal and I came home STUFFED. Eric even mentioned it was our anniversary when he made the reservations and they put flowers on our table that I got to take home.


We picked Brennan up since I wasn't quite ready to leave him overnight yet, and Cate stayed with her grandparents. Sunday, our actual anniversary, was pretty lazy. Eric got donuts and coffee and a Sunday times and we lounged around on the back patio before going to get Cate.
Cate went to bed early and Eric cooked a great shrimp/pasta dish which we ate on our china.
It was a dish he made for me on our first Valentine's Day together. We were in college and on our way to what I thought was a restaurant. Halfway there, Eric said "Oh, crap, I forgot my wallet at home." I offered to pay so we could keep going, but he insisted on turning around to get it. Little did I know that dinner was waiting for me back at his apartment and his awesome roommate had lit about 100 candles in the short time we'd been driving and then vacated the apartment while we ate. So the dish brought back memories.

And I have to mention this too:
This is Eric's anniversary gift-- a leather cuff bracelet from Lisa Leonard designs with our kids' birthdates on it. I love it. He loves it. I don't have a picture, but I got Brennan's fingerprint on a silver heart to match one I have for Cate. So now I have a necklace with two heart charms-- one with each kids' fingerprint.

It was a wonderful way to celebrate seven years. We also did a little bit of dreaming and decided that we'll celebrate years 8 and 9 quietly because barring a major financial crisis, we plan to spend our 10th anniversary here. Hopefully, in one of the awesome swim-up rooms. We've started saving for it already.



I can only hope we have so many more years together. These first seven have been great. We've had our share of ups and downs, but I wouldn't trade them for anything.

~Melody :-)
PS... Some of my formatting got messed up. Sorry. Don't know why some stuff is underlined and everything and I don't have the time to mess around with it to fix it. :-)