Joel, Amber and Myriah: How time flies

Last Friday we celebrated 5 wonderful years of marriage. Wow, 5 years. I can hardly believe. It seems like yesterday we were excitedly hurrying out of Kincaid Park on the way to our honeymoon. And now here we are, 5 years, 2 cats and 2 states later, living in Alexandria and loving life and each other more than ever.

What did we do to celebrate? I'm glad you asked. We took the day off and enjoyed sleeping in, eating stuffed French Toast on the balcony and spending the day at the park. We went to Maggiano's for dinner, an old favorite (we used to go there to celebrate special occassions in Houston). We enjoyed a lovely dinner and Joel surprised me by "breaking the rules" and getting me a beautiful diamond stud necklace. I say "broke the rules" because our usual present for the past anniversaries is to go away for the weekend together (which is what we are doing this coming weekend). But I quickly forgave him and told him that breaking the rules every 5 years was okay. The necklace is beautiful. It was the perfect present for a very happy day.

On Saturday we celebrated my "un-birthday" by driving to the beach (and stopping to pick blueberries on the way). We started a new tradition where we celebrate both the end of being the year you are and then celebrating the real birthday on the actual day. That way you make sure there is always plenty of celebration. Besides, my birthday is in the middle of the week this year and it's hard to do much more besides go out to dinner and eat cake (which we plan on doing, I might add). So we had to celebrate more, hence the beach trip on the weekend.

Here is a picture from the blueberry picking. We were afraid to get the camera out at the beach because it was VERY windy and we have had bad experiences with beaches and cameras. So this will have to do. You can see the necklace a little but I'll make sure to get a better shot soon.