Eleven

Today is my wedding anniversary. I've officially been married for 11 years now. It occurred to me this evening that I have spent 5 of those anniversaries as a widow. I wonder what the graph of the quality of anniversaries over time would look like for me. Here's a brief description of our anniversaries thus far (I'll leave out the racy parts... Ha!):

#1-- 1999: No children. No money. But we celebrated three times. The day of our anniversary, we ate at Mandarin Garden (the location of our first "real" date in 1997) and then went to a movie ("You've Got Mail"). The day after our anniversary, our dear friends (Jana, Melanie, and Leslie) surprised us with a fancy dinner at home. We walked in the door of our 300 sq foot studio apartment to a card table beautifully set in the living room. But the piece de resistance was spending the night in one of the suites at Little America in December (which I decided to do because we were both on break from school). The best part was that I surprised Carter-- I was on the "Homemaking" (as it was called then) committee and told him that we were driving to Provo to stay in a cabin as an activity that our committee had planned to surprise our husbands. Carter hated stuff like that, so he wasn't thrilled to be going; but went to support me in my calling. When we got to SLC I told him that I needed to stop at Crossroads Mall to exchange something. As we drove through downtown, I pretended to be lost and pulled into the Little America hotel parking lot to turn around. I parked and he looked very confused as I explained that we weren't really going to Provo to hang out with other married couples who drove him nuts, but that instead we were staying the night in a suite at that hotel. Needless to say, he was ecstatic about the change in plans and very, very surprised.

#2-- 2000: One kid. Even less money. Jana willingly offered to babysit our little 2 month old screamer so we could have a night alone. We downgraded our hotel choice and stayed overnight in a hotel that had a thousand box elder bugs as permanent guests. When we got to our room, we were not happy to find that is was like a scullery maid's room with a small tub and a cinderblock wall. We complained, so they moved us to a suite. It wasn't much better though. The tub was bigger, but we tried taking a hot bath and unfortunately the water didn't stay hot long enough to fill it. And box elder bugs fell on us as we slept.

#3-- 2001: Still just one kid. Still no money. But we weren't going to repeat the same problem we had the year before. So we splurged and went back to the bed and breakfast where we spent our honeymoon. It was beautiful.

#4-- 2002: Yes, we still just had the one and we were quite broke. We decided to go down to SLC and Jana again watched our little toddler. We got the best chinese take-out in town and stayed in the worst hotel. That place was definitely a dump. I'm not sure the saved $40 was worth it.

#5-- 2003: One and a half kiddos. Broke and living in Indiana (which means no free babysitters who will stay overnight). To be quite honest, I'm not sure what we did this year. We probably went to Walmart as that was our typical date location. Geez-- I wish I could remember what we did. Too bad I don't keep journals...

#6-- 2004: Two kiddos. Broke in time and money. My Mom was visiting to help with the new baby, but since we were so poor and little Emeline was so young, we decided to just go out for the evening rather than the whole night. Carter was in grad school, so we went out to lunch that afternoon at a great cafe called Cafe d'Jango (Bloominton had the best ethnic restaurants). A couple months before, I lost the pearl on my wedding ring. I told him not to get it fixed because we didn't have any mula. But he surprised me and fixed it anyway. He gave it to me at lunch in a small, carved jewelry box that he bought from a local shop. That night we went to the third Lord of the Rings movie-- which I thoroughly loved.

#7-- 2005: This was the first one I spent solo-- well, at least in a physical sense. I don't remember what I did. But I remember that it was very sad for me. And we'll just leave it at that.

#8-- 2006: I went to the temple and then took myself out to lunch at a great place in downtown Louisville. Remember: if you go to lunch by yourself, bring a book. I was really bored. The kids and I watched a movie that night after I got back.

#9-- 2007: Temple again-- but this time I decided to drive back and take the kids to dinner. We planned to watch a movie, so I joked with the kids that we could watch the wedding video. I was surprised when they emphatically agreed. They were a captive audience through the whole thing. Then they asked me to put it back to the part where Carter and I danced and they dressed up and danced too. Emeline asked me to put on my "princess dress", so I did (it almost fit...). It was a tender experience for all of us.

#10-- 2008: The kids were in St. George with Grandma because I had something for work or school that weekend. I planned on driving down to spend the day with them, but a blizzard rolled in, so I was stuck. I spent the evening with my friend and her husband and children for FHE watching people play guitar hero while I ate ice-cream. Afterwards we watched DaVinci Code, which I absolutely hated.

So now it's #11. We went out to Applebee's for dinner after I got off work. I thought it was interesting that the waiter asked me if it was a special occasion. We've gone out to eat before and never had anyone ask that-- so I was a bit taken back. I told him that I am widowed and that today is my anniversary, so my kids and I were out to celebrate it. He was very polite and later brought us a free dessert. That kind of sweetness, even from strangers, compensates somewhat for missing out on the sweetness that Carter would be showing me if he was here. After eating too much (dang they have good nachos!), we got into PJs (at home, of course) and played checkers while re-watching our wedding video. The kids' favorite part is the "Dancing Virgins" that entertained us at the reception. Melanie, Mary, and Jana danced to "Wishin' and Hopin'" from "My Best Friend's Wedding." Someday I'll have to make a digital version of that dance-- it was fabulous!

It's hard to say what the quality over time graph would look like for my anniversaries. I think it's on the decline. But we've seen significant improvements in the last 5 years so maybe the worst is over.