Oh, Baby!

I just ran across some photos from my 13th wedding anniversary...I'm sure you'll be impressed..haha! Our anniversary, which is August 2nd, most often falls during Vacation Bible School. We're used to it, so we just spend the evening at church doing whatever our task entails, and celebrate if and when we have time. This year we were able to get away for a night in Ft. Wayne the Friday previous, and didn't plan to do anything the day of, mostly because I spent the entire day at the church helping with VBS prep, and Greg came to help as quickly as he could get off of work. After VBS, we felt the need to eat dinner, and did the risky thing...took 4 extremely exhausted kids with us to Applebee's to celebrate 13 years of love and happiness. It was a little hard to "feel the luv" at first, because little Alli (who normally wakes up very cheerfully) had fallen asleep on the short drive into Lima. She didn't awake in typical fashion, and cried for at least the first 15 minutes we were in the restaurant. I'm sure most people were wondering why we didn't take our sleepy little family home and put them to bed! Our waiter brought us a special treat "on the house", and it was quite romantic to share a large sundae with our kids...sort of. It ended up being a neat experience with our waiter, who was probably single and in his mid-20's, and wanted to know the secret of our being together, without regret, for 13 years. We were able to share with him that communication, commitment, and our relationship with God were the greatest factors in our happy, fulfilled marriage. He was appreciative of the input, and shared some of his story. I hope we were able to have at least a small impact on his future decisions.
And so, that is the story of Anniversary #13, 2010.