I'm not quite sure how it can be Groundhog Day of 2019 already. Wasn't it just New Year's? How can a month be gone so quickly? I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that we celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary.
Yes, you read that correctly. Twenty years he's put up with me.
Some of you were there when we got married at 3:33 pm on January 9, 1999. Some of you weren't even born yet. Some of you couldn't make it because of the horrendous weather and the turnpike being closed. Some of you are aware that even our wedding cake didn't make it. Some of you didn't notice because Grandma Barb whipped up a cake during our reception so we'd have something to cut and Aunt Lainie and Uncle Gary bought other cakes from Giant Eagle that didn't have writing all over them so there would be cake to eat.
I was mulling over numbers and thought it'd be fun to play a numbers game:
20 for the years we've been married
19th of April, 1997 when we officially began dating
18th of October, 1997 was when he proposed (bear in mind we met in 1994 and worked together every summer)
17 is for the number of IV rounds I'll have undergone to complete breast cancer treatment: six with the chemo drugs Taxotere and Carbo, all of them with Herceptin and Perjeta
16 for the foreign countries Dada has traveled to for his job
15 is the age of our eldest child. How did that happen?
14 is how many of us belong in the "communication skills of a large bowl of mashed potatoes" clan: Uncles Kelly, Rob, and Dada, Aunts Becky, Jana, and I, and the cousins: Carrie, Liam, Lizzie, Zach, Damon, Neva, Noah, and Rosalina.
13 is the age of our middle child; we currently have two teenagers.
12 for the dozen peach roses I sent to him, not realizing they would be delivered on April Fool's Day of 1997. No mixed signals there...
11 as in "on a scale of one to ten, YOU are an eleven" from Disney's "Aladdin"; it's a compliment which still cracks us up.
10 year anniversary had us leaving the kids with the grandparents while we went camping in Hawaii. We used his bazillions of airfare miles he'd racked up to get there and back.
9 places we've lived together. We've moved a bit.
8 is the age of our youngest. Obviously he didn't get left with the grandparents when we were in Hawaii. Also how many hours it took to drive from Woodsy House to The Last Resort when moving from PA to IL with a tiny Miss Carrie.
7 is the number of Dada's birthday buddies, which includes Muggin, our sister in law. It's also how many schools our kids have collectively attended.
6 "real" or paying jobs we've held together
5 islands we've visited: Jamaica, Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, and Put-in-Bay. Also the number of cars we've had. And roughly how many hours it takes to drive from Ohio State to Penn State.
4 years of Christian church camp together on staff as well as four people each who stood with us on both sides of the aisle during our wedding.
3 blissful weeks spent together camping in Hawaii. "Lost" is right; "we have to go back!"
2 vehicles to haul us back east across the country after he was laid off from his first job out of college; while bittersweet it was probably a blessing in disguise. Also the number of dogs we've owned.
1 tiny surprise pumpkin proposal that started it all!
Anniversary dinner at home with Moscato D'Asti, woohoo:
And our anniversary present to each other was new pots and pans. Never mind that the traditional gift for 20 years is china. We'd already been blessed with beautiful china from my grandparents who had worked at Shenango China back in the day. However, our nonstick pans have taken a terrible beating and are not nonstick anymore, so new pots and pans it is. We bought them before we knew about the fireplace needing replaced, so I guess happy anniversary to us all around:
Pancakes were the perfect way to break them in. Come on over and we'll make you some, too!
2 comments:
UMMMMM......Where's the pictures of the pots and pans? Did I not scroll down enough??
You're so cute. It's the very last picture, the pan with the pancakes. I don't know why they call them stainless steel when the very first time you use them they immediately look as stained as if you'd used them for twenty years! I didn't take a shot of all of them; you'll have to come play with them yourself when you visit! <3
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