I’m Never Breaking Up With You…

My husband and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary on July 29th. It’s funny because it feels like 6 years and 60 years depending on the day! I’m sure most married couples can relate to that. I didn’t get roses or diamonds or anything… that’s not his style. He sends flowers for random weird holidays when I won’t expect them (President’s Day, Groundhog’s Day, etc) and I’m not a big diamond or jewelry girl. I know, strange. But seriously. I’m just not that into bling. But he gave me a card that was funny and sweet and then simply wrote “I love you more today than I did when we started this crazy thing”. I choked up. I’m easy. (Oh, and we went to dinner. Like a five course dinner. With side dishes we’d never heard of… WAY out of our league, but really fun).

So, I’m going to share some other funny things about us and our 16 year journey (feel free to stop reading here *G*)

We were friends for six years before anything romantic happened. We hung out, invited each other to parties, had tons of friends in common. In fact, we dated each other’s best friends at one point and it was his girlfriend/ my friend who said “you two would be the perfect couple”. Yeah, it was weird at the time, but I never forgot it. So finally one night we were both single and we’d gone to see another friend in a play. When he dropped me off at home I finally sucked it up and said, “Have you ever thought about us being more than friends?” He turned to me and said simply, “All the time.” Seven months later we were engaged and a year later we were married.

One day when we were in the mall shopping we went past a ring store. He asked if I’d ever thought about what I liked or wanted. I knew as a physical therapist I’d be working with my hands a lot and most therapists a knew had opted to get a plain gold band to wear at work so as not to scratch anyone with their diamonds. I knew I wanted to wear the actual wedding ring every day so I said “well, I definitely want a small diamond.” He looked at me with wide eyes and repeated “You want a small diamond?” I nodded and he replied, “I’m never breaking up with you. Just so you know.” After that I realized that it was a dream come true for a poor recent college graduate to find a woman who didn’t want a ten-pound rock on her finger!

For our honeymoon we decided to drive to the mountains. The first night we spent in a hotel near the wedding and reception, but the second night we took off on our road trip. We knew our final destination but didn’t know when or if we would stop along the way. We did eventually get tired, but couldn’t find a hotel room for miles! We’d stop, they’d be full, and we’d drive until the next one. Then they’d be full. (If I’d been on a donkey and 9 months pregnant I would have thought something supernatural was going on!) Eventually we were so tired we just couldn’t keep driving.

So we spent our second night of marriage, the first of our official honeymoon, sleeping in the car at a truck stop.

We actually found it funny even at the time and have pictures of the truck stop and car with “Love Shack” as the caption.

Anyway, here we are 16 years later, with 2 fantastic kids, lots of great memories, and still plenty of laughter… so I think we’re doing pretty good!

Anybody else have funny or sweet (or both) moments? Come on, I know you do! (this is, of course, for those who kept reading through all my mushy possibly-relevant-only-to-me stuff above *g*)
Erin