i took a moment from my day*

Tonight when I gathered my things and breezed out the door to pick up at the coffee shop what I didn't finish at the office, I had this *flash* and I was leaving my dorm room for a night of studying [socializing] at the library. (4th floor, tables by the window.) Maybe it's the chill in the air or the anticipation of nighttime coffee or maybe it's all the old photos I've been pouring through.

John and I just celebrated 10 years of matrimonial bliss. [Last week, on Owen's 7th birthday.] This month also marks 13 years since we've been an item (Although the date is marked via hindsight, as it took me months before I let him call me his girlfriend, silly me.) And this month also marks 14 years since we've met - on a late summer/early fall night before classes started. He was there early for soccer practice, and I was there for some pre-freshman orientation thing that I don't clearly recall. But my friend Jamie and I and a couple of other girls were roaming the halls of the dorms, looking for boys, when we came upon an open door and a tiny room full of *cha-ching* SOCCER PLAYERS. (yep.) I sat down next to that shaggy blond-haired baby-faced Beck-look-alike boy and probably didn't turn my eyes elsewhere the entire night. And while it was an entire year before we actually started dating/hanging out/making out (whatever), it was that night, that very first night that we met, when he vowed to his buddies ala Wayne's World (it was 1996, yo.) She will be mine. Oh yes, she will be mine. [true story.]

So we've been together for a while. And there are many more stories between there and here, but I'll save them for another time. Because tonight I think of our college days. Pre-kids. Pre-marriage. Pre-anything-other-than-the-self-absorption-that-comes-with-being-a-college-kid-and-following-the-Phish-tour. And thanks to the thoughtful 10 year anniversary gift of my sweet husband [a photo book - complete with captions and messages all bound and hard-covered!], I actually have a stash of old photos scanned in, at the ready for sharing.

So here we are, in our early days. And I am grateful to God and the series of events that have played out through the universe over the last decade+ that I can say today with all my heart that we are even happier, even more in love, than we were then.

[I love you, babe.]

the evolution of us...

the dorms circa 1997: New Love, complete with college clichés i.e. grateful dead poster, guitar, and an ugly couch

1998? '99? Some summer, some Phish show. Deer Creek maybe? (anyone recognize this?)

In Belize 1998 - he came to visit me during my semester abroad

January 1, 2000 - in Florida after seeing Phish at Big Cyprus for NYE'99

September 2, 2000 Four months after graduating college, at 22 yo, we tied the knot!

Our one-year anniversary, backpacking in the Porcupine Mountains of Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Sept. 01, 1 yr married and road-trippin' to Rocky Mountain National Park

November 2002, biking slickrock at Moab. That beard? A product of 5 months without shaving or trimming. He went another two before he buzzed it off. My grandma told him he "looked like a trapper."

Our 3yr anniversary, in our upper flat with our hours-old firstborn. I know, I look 12. And I'm red and blotchy from hormonal happy crying, and my husband has a farmer tan. He was holding the baby skin-to-skin, people! That's why he's not wearing a shirt in any of those early-days pictures.

Our 4yr anniversary, camping at Minnesota's Whitewater State Park...our 1 year old birthday boy was asleep in the tent.

2005 So happy together... family of 3 with a bun in the oven

Six years married, with two month old second child at Wolfman Triathlon

seven years down! a night away from the boys for the Wolfman triathlon

Eight years of wedded bliss...we're growing! (check out that belly) 2008

Axel's first Phish show, summer of 2009 @Alpine Valley

fall of 2009, nine years married

2010 - a decade of marriage! here's to many more decades to come.

*title taken from the lyrics of Wading in the Velvet Sea by Phish