Oh, What a Decade!

Yesterday was Russ' & my 10th anniversary; I have officially been married 1/3 of my life! I'm confident that I couldn't have wished up a better 10 years. Spending my life with Russ has been more awesome than I could have ever imagined. And our 3 beautiful kids and our dream house being built. . . I wish I could just bottle up this time in my life! I don't think it gets any better; God has certainly blessed me immeasurably!

I know I've included these pictures before (a couple years back), but in case you don't remember. . . My mom took me shopping before our wedding to get me a couple of new dresses for the honeymoon, one of which was this green dress. The evening I wore it, we took a normal picture and then Russ picked me up and set the self-timer on the camera for a 'carrying over the threshold' picture. (Clearly, we weren't great with the whole self-timer thing. . .yet.)

The next year, I packed the dress when we went to Chicago for our anniversary, the picture was taken again, and thus the cheesy tradition began. . .

See if you can figure out in the next 8 pictures which times I was pregnant (it's pretty obvious with Violet, somewhat apparent with Oliver, and not really noticeable with Calvin).

And this was last evening before we went to dinner. . .Where were we, you ask?

Well, I had always thought we might go to Europe or Hawaii for our 10th anniversary. We didn't make it either of those places, but we got close:

So I know Topeka isn't really all that far from home or exotic, but we had some errands to run there for our house, so figured we could find a place to stay. Russ found this historic old hotel called "The Senate" and it was built in 1928.

How long has it been since you've stayed at a hotel with one of these? This hotel looked like there hadn't been a whole lot changed since it was built. . .

There have been a few famous people stay here (although not really in the last 20 years, it looked like). Here was their wall of fame, including Grandpa Munster, Travis Tritt, some Miss America, and as Calvin was quick to notice, Dora the Explorer. Wonder which room she stayed in? Did they let her monkey stay?

In our room we found these delicious chocolate-covered strawberries and sparkling wine. We ate at a delicious Thai restaurant and had a wonderful relaxing evening, thanks to Mom & Dad keeping the kids for us.

What a wonderful 10 years we've had! I don't think it's possible to have another 10 years as great as the last, but we'll sure give it a try!