Happy Belated Anniversary To Us!

Last Friday, August the 10th marked our 11th anniversary. As I shared earlier we had Tuesday through Sunday of last week to ourselves with the boys at grandparents houses. We spent most of our time preparing for our garage sale Saturday morning. I know that doesn't sound very romantic but after eleven years of marriage the best thing we could do for us was to simplify our lives, declutter, and get rid of stuff. The garage sale was a huge success. We bid a fond farewell to many many miscellaneous items we had forgotten we even had (we sold some things we had gotten as wedding presents and never used!) and made some money along the way. You can't beat that. We're talking about having another garage sale later this fall with our left overs and some more things we'll clean out before then. I think it's kind of fun after eleven years of marriage to do something new together - even if it was just a garage sale.


Here's our garage before we sat everything out on the driveway. The sad thing is we had just as much stuff in the house waiting to be carried out. Whew! We used a total of 16 tables and 1 bookshelf to display all our lovely merchandise. I'd say this garage sale was long overdue.


Thursday night David did have a much more romantic anniversary treat planned. He had told me earlier that we were going to be spending the night away from home on the 9th but wouldn't give any details. He's so good at surprises (and horrible at being surprised but that's another story). We packed our bag and headed out to our mystery destination - it was MCM Elegante Suites here in Abilene! I was very impressed. It turns out he had received a free nights stay as a prize for something he did earlier in the year and kept it a secret all that time. He also had a gift card from Red Robin and took me there for dinner - it is one of my very most favorite places to eat. We had a great time just relaxing and because of David's special planning didn't cost us an arm and a leg. Which is good since we were trying to make money not spend it.

Here we are at Red Robin, Our waitress made us a complimentary sundae when we told her we were celebrating our anniversary. She was really nice.
Here are some pics of our suite.
And here we are at the huge fountain in the main eating area. One friend of mine said she likes to go to the restaurant here for lunch sometimes because she can feel like she's on vacation somewhere even if it is just for her lunch hour. I can relate. It is such a neat setting you almost forget you're still right here in good ol' Abilene.

Friday night our church planned a date night. (I thought it was nice of them to do that for our anniversary.) It was called Mission 2B1: Strategic Dating. The plan was that you drop off your kids (not an issue for us since they were already taken care of) and pick up your assignment at the church, then go have a nice quiet dinner somewhere and do your assignment, and then meet back up at the church for dessert and debriefing. It was really cool. The assignment was to take the Five Love Languages test (from the study by Gary Chapman) and find out what your love language is. We did the Love Languages study years ago but it was a really good refresher. (FYI: David is an Acts of Service and I'm a Physical Touch.) One of our elders then let a short discussion time on the topic at the end of the night as we all enjoyed scrumptious desserts. I'm so glad we attend a church that encourages strong godly marriages.

I'll end this anniversary blog with one of my favorite love verses from God's word.

"Many waters cannot quench love, nor will rivers overflow it; If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love, it would be utterly despised." Song of Solomon 8:7