Four Years

Every year on our anniversary, we have fajitas and derby pie, the meal we served at our wedding reception. And this year was no exception...

For our first anniversary, we spent a weekend at a quiet resort in West Virginia. The traditional gift is paper, so we gifted ourselves a family bible. And the next day we found out we were expecting Claire!

For our second anniversary, we stayed the night at the fancy hotel overlooking Snoqualmie Falls. We had just moved to Seattle a few weeks previous and four-month old Claire tagged along. The traditional gift is cotton, so we splurged on a nice set of sheets. 

For our third anniversary, my parents watched Claire while we spent a night at hotel and had dinner at the Space Needle. The traditional gift is leather, so we gave each other monogrammed leather key chains.

And for our fourth anniversary, my parents were in town for the weekend before flying back to Shanghai, so they watched the girls while we had dinner at Trellis, a delicious French restaurant in our little suburb. The traditional gift is fruit or flowers, so we ordered two tiny botanical paintings from Emily Jeffords that should arrive later this week! 

It was definitely our most low-key celebration to date, but we're planning to do it up in style for year five. Hopefully a non-visiting-relatives vacation that's longer than 1.5 days long?

We have a great, great life. Adam has a job that he enjoys, that pays well, and that's very family-friendly. I get to stay at home with our two sweet little girls. We live in a cute house in a cute town in one of the most beautiful areas of one of the safest, most prosperous countries in the world. We are amazingly blessed.

But, man, life is not easy. That was demonstrated as we tried to prepare and eat a fancier than normal meal on a weeknight, accompanied by lots and lots of shrieking from the baby and whining from the toddler. And it was demonstrated again as we were putting a crazy-hyper toddler and a cranky teething baby to bed before our dinner date. A teething baby who, after receiving a dose of tylenol, threw up her entire dinner, ten minutes before our reservation...

I think it's finally been hit over my head enough that our vocations are supposed to be hard. Like really, really hard. Can you imagine how much work it is to be the average parish priest? Responsible for hundreds of families and a school, mostly likely all by yourself. Or what it would be like to say goodbye to your family and become a cloistered nun?

Our purpose here on earth is to know, love, and serve God. Turns out that serving part is quite a lot of work. And involves a good deal of vomit, at least in my case!