AMAZING.
That is the one word that best describes the past 10 years for me. Chip and I were married on the afternoon of December 18th, 1999. It was a special day all around...it happened to also be my grandfather's birthday in addition to the day I graduated college. It was the only date that worked for us within a 8 month period of time while Chip was in his second year of dental school. It was a wondefully warm December day, where we were surrounded by friends, family and as much love as was humanly possible.
Ten years ago today, Chip was running his 7 thousandth errand for the wedding since he was on his Christmas break and I was student teaching up until the 16th. I stand firm in the idea that Chip and Kara are close to this day because of the time they had to spend together while I was at school. Also on this day was my bridesmaid's luncheon, where Chrissy locked my keys in my car to make it 7001 errands for Chip. I realized at 4PM that I had not picked out an outfit for my own rehearsal. We realized at 11PM that we had not packed so much as a toothbrush for our honeymoon. I burned my hand making flower girl baskets (where ARE those beautiful things anyway?) nixing the obligatory hand-over-hand wedding band shot the next day. In all of the chaos, we still kissed goodnight at 11:59PM so as to not see each other on the day of the wedding.
To say it's been a whirlwind ever since would be the understatement of, well, of the decade. I can clearly remember sitting at a restaurant in Memphis that we definitely could not afford on our one year anniversary. We reflected on the previous year as if we had survived a hurricane, tornado, earthquake and tsunami all in one year. That night, December 18, 2000, we reflected mostly on memories of our perfect wedding day: me drinking an entire bottle of Pepto before the ceremony, Kori going barefoot down the aisle (she was 2, after all) with a 102' fever, the carwash at 10PM so that we could see our way down the interstate to Atlanta, the rainy drive where we were so incredibly exhausted we had to change drivers every 30 minutes during the 3 hour drive, my 724 bobby pins I took out of my hair creating a rather scary hairstyle for the hotel staff that greeted us, eating a Ruby Tuesday hamburger at midnight because we hadn't eaten the entire day...and the list goes on. It's amazing how far we've come in the 9 years since that night. I'm happy to know that our reflections are entirely different and infinitely more interesting and important.
We watched an interesting movie recently that compared marriage to education. If you have gotten married, it's like getting your high school diploma in knowing your spouse. The rest of your time together, you're working towards your college degree, your masters, your doctorate. I bet your fairy godmother must magically arrive to present your doctorate at your 50th Anniversary celebration. And not a minute sooner. I learn new things about Chip every single day. Thank goodness! How boring if I felt like I knew everything about him and there was nothing left to discover! Do you think I would have honestly married him if I knew 10 years ago that he would
enjoy driving me nuts by cutting his fingernails in bed? Or that he would waste hundreds of dollars by leaving every light on in the house? I think he would have had some serious reservations about me if he would have known that I would someday force him to sneeze into his elbow or if he knew how many half-full bottles of water he would find over the years throughout the house. Unfortunately, 2 wrongs don't make a right somtimes...he hates it when I eat carrots in bed (what's the big deal?) and I can't stand the way he eats potato chips. We probably disagree most about the heat...he is normally freezing and I'm typically dying a slow death of heat exhaustion. Except at work...he turns the A/C on in the middle of a snowy, January afternoon while I'm up front attempting to not let the patients hear my teeth chattering. Luckily, my brainiac, smarty-pants husband is amazingly tolerant of my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, right-brained, talk-before-you-think self. One of his best qualities is to be able to laugh at me. And even better, I don't get mad when he does!
Chip...I love you. These have been the best 10 years of my life so far. I have absolutely no doubt that the next several decades are all going to be better than our first one. For that, I am grateful to you for helping me have the confidence in our relationship, in our marriage to know that, even though it's been as perfect as possible so far, it can only get better. I use the term "perfect" loosely. To say the past year has been easy might be a stretch, but the only thing this past year has done is show me how much I love you, need you and how truly blessed I am to have you in my life. We are given obstacles in life to prove to ourselves that we are stronger than we once believed, to be reminded that we are not in control, and to see more clearly what is most important in life. It wasn't possible to learn that I loved you more but I did learn to stop and smell the roses.
I truly believe I loved you the first moment I laid my eyes on you 17 years ago. I remember that May day in 1992 almost more clearly than I remember yesterday. I cannot believe that "cute soccer player" that everyone kept telling me about was actually on my bus to St. Louis. Thank the good Lord for high school band/orchestra trips!
Luckily, it's been difficult for me to write this blog. Literally. We work together every single day and I love it when people are taken back with that idea. I'd say about 90% of the people that know we work together just can't understand how we are still happily married and neither of us has had their eyes clawed out. I love those conversations! I love telling people how we work together so easily (ok, relatively easily!). It makes me proud of our relationship! Somehow, we're still married. We're still happy. So, we are together so much that I found it difficult to find the time to write this in his absence! I wouldn't have it any other way. It's our life, our way, it's how we live and how we love and in my humble opinion, it's
perfection.
SuperGirls have to protect their super powers from the evil raindrops! What a wet and gloomy Halloween it was!
This was the real Halloween costume which arrived around 2PM on Saturday via the USPS, only about 5 days late. However, Cooper didn't put it on until about 9PM Halloween night. 
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