12th Anniversary

My husband.  Also known as The Rock or The Oak or Mr. Sturdy, comes up with some off the wall stuff every now and then that will blow you away.  And for our 12th anniversary, he did just that.

You see, him and our precious little girl, came up with the bright idea of recreating our wedding.  In our kitchen.  With a bride that had 30-ish pounds more to love.  But that's neither here nor there.  I kept fixating on that, but tried to enjoy the moment for what it truly was: blessings galore and being surrounded by people who adore me and each other.

Nathan, all of 4 years old, was the official photographer.

Jim got dressed up for the re-creation.

He. Convinced. Me. To. Put. My. Wedding. Dress. On.

I'll spare you all the shots showing my backside and the 8-inch gap in the zipper being held together by a 63 ft. piece of ribbon.  Well, maybe not a FULL 63 feet.  But trust me, it was close to that.

Brandon was my escort and the ring bearer, carrying the rings on his buffalo pillow CowPapa got him in Montana.

Katherine knew where to find some spare silk flowers in my sewing cabinet for my bouquet.

The ceremony consisted of me walking through the kitchen, escorted by Brandon, while the laptop played "Here Comes the Bride" and Katherine reading a script tucked neatly away in her baptism bible.  Her script being the usual, "We are gathered here..." along with some prompts neatly written out by Daddy.

Jim even found the actual unity candle from our wedding.

And afterwards, we had a toast with sparkling, iced water in plastic cups.

 
As uncomfortable as I was to be wearing that size 4 wedding dress again (and I use the term "wearing" lightly.  "Strapping on" might be closer to reality), it was a beautiful reminder of what that day signified.  Our love for each other.  Through thick and thin.  And the beautiful family we created through all that.

Happy Anniversary Jim.  Thank you for the loving and thoughtful way you show me how much you love me.  I love you to the moon and back and thank God for you everyday.

Summer Vacation 2011 - Boyer style

Watch out Clark Griswald! It wasn't anywhere near as exciting as having Aunt Edna strapped to the top of our car, but entertaining in our own special way.

Thanks in advance, (plug alert) to Groupon Getaways. I found a fabulous deal online, one of those 50% off coupons, and we parked ourselves for three nights in a "hotel room" that was, no lie, the size of a 2-bedroom apartment. Not kidding. For less than a regular hotel room.

Jim and I, along with the newest addition, went down the first night while the older 2 kiddos stayed the night at Bamah & Papa's. This week we will be celebrating our 10th anniversary, so the first night was for just the parents.

Remarkably, our sleeping place was within 15 minutes of a Columbia restaurant, so guess where we went to eat? Our favorite eatery, of course! We've been there a couple of times :)

It was a relaxing and restful evening. Thank goodness we got all rested up because the next day we had to dig DEEP for the energy.

Jim left Friday AM to meet Bamah & Papa half way to pick up the kids, while I stayed back in the room and took care of Brandon (translation: blogged and played with my new laptop). When they got back the kids were ecstatic about the room. Hotels are always fun for them, so they managed to peek in every nook and cranny they could find within minutes.

We did the best we could to force feed them naps in preparation for our trip to SeaWorld that afternoon and evening. They reluctantly went down and at 2:15 we were waking them up to get going.

Almost there...


A little confused about where we're going.

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Katherine loved the dolphin nursery.
Nathan loved the sharks.
We couldn't go to SeaWorld without seeing the killer whale show.
Here we are waiting for the lightning storm to clear so we can see the show. Did I happen to mention the heat index for that day was 105? Oh I didn't? Here are some basics we learned for dealing with that kind of weather.

• Don't even try to put on makeup, prepare for au naturale all day. Rather yet, embrace splotchy skin as your new picture-friendly friend.
• If you want any nice family pictures, you better take it as soon as you walk in the park next to the nearest SeaWorld-related structure.
• Better go ahead and rent the strollers when you're near the entrance, because they're not at the opposite end of the park when you need them the most and kids don't last very long in that heat.

As a side note, little feller was a complete gem. There were a couple of times I made sure to peek around and look at him in the stroller because he was so quiet.
Jim and I did notice that the whale trainers don't get in the water anymore. Sad. Guess it's because of the tragedy of losing one of the trainers last year. Remembering how it used to be will be one of those stories we'll be able to share with our kids about how we remember the neat tricks they would do with the whales. Like standing on the nose of the killer whale and diving deep to the bottom of the pool then being thrust into the air. You know, one of those 'back in my day' stories.We opted to do the 'after 3pm' tickets, so our trip lasted from then till almost 10 that night. What a full day. Jim likes to tease me by saying, "I don't go on vacation to rest." That was a phrase I said many times when we were on our honeymoon. :) So that's exactly what we did or didn't do. We filled our first day of vacation chock full and had 3 very tired kiddos.

The next day we made a trip to Alligator Land. It was another hot day, but fun.
We drug ourselves back to the hotel after spending a couple of hours there, and did what? We rested! Ok, well I can fully justify resting on vacation with little ones.

Then we headed to our favorite Downtown Disney restaurant, T-Rex Cafe.

After a bit of a wait, we were finally seated in what looked like the ice age room and witnessed many 'meteorite showers'.
This place has a special love/hate relationship in Nathan's heart. He absolutely loves the dinosaurs, but they can be a bit intimidating with their life-size growling and movements.
We had to cut our walking around Downtown Disney short because of a storm approaching which meant we headed back to the hotel a little earlier than expected. Never fear though, our kids are still little enough to really, truly enjoy just being in a hotel. So that's what we did and on top of that, promised them baths in the jacuzzi tub. Whoo hoo!

Side note: One thing I forgot to mention above in the SeaWorld verbage was that Nathan had a little bit of a 'loose condition' within minutes of us arriving. That should have sent us racing for the double stroller, but we didn't. We were tough and could handle carrying at least one child pretty much the entire trip. Mama & Dada were past tired when we finally laid down that night, for that exact reason. So on the way home we got some medicine for the little feller. Poor guy. It started working immediately and thankfully there were no incidents at Alligator Land.

So back to the jacuzzi story. The medicine was working beautifully. But remember, eventually whatever goes in must come out. So soon after daddy drew the bath water and both kids were enjoying it filling up, we heard Nathan start exclaiming, "Oh no! Oh no, that's not good!" Then Katherine started saying, "No, Nathan, that's not good! No Nathan No. Don't do that. It's not good!"

Jim walked in to witness "The Exit." Something about warm baths relaxes the intestines for that boy and boy was he proud of it. He must have felt better. Her, not so much. She made a bee-line for the shower and Daddy had fun laughing with the 'lighter one'.

What a fabulous trip for our family. We celebrated 10 years of wedded bliss and the beautiful family we've created all in the same weekend. Thank you, Jim, for your selfless love of this family and me, even when I'm no fun to be around. I love you dearly and look forward to another 50 years of living and vacationing with you.

8 Years!

(Yellowstone, 2004)

This week we celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. We love to go to St. Augustine and eat at the Columbia Restaurant. Particularly, their 1905 salad is what we drive there for. It gives us 3 hours of uninterrupted drive time to talk, which is something we rarely get a chance to do.

The Columbia Restaurant has their own parking lot with an attendant. Since I can remember, we've seen the same guy manning the entrance/exit and he is VERY hard to understand. He has a strong Spanish accent and we always get a kick out of me not being able to understand him. Even though I know the general idea of what he's going to say (here's your voucher, get it stamped by your waiter and bring it back so you don't have to pay for parking), I literally cannot understand but about 1 of every 25 words that come out of his mouth. One year, I was driving as we entered the parking lot. I knew what he was going to say, but I was so frozen with not understanding him that Jim finally said, "I understood him, go park." It still didn't register, my brain was too busy trying to decipher his words; my mouth was open, I had this dumbfounded look on my face, and the guy was shifting his eyes from me to the car waiting behind me. I finally drove forward asking within hearing distance of him, "what did he say?"

So this last visit, before Jim drove up, I made a conscience effort to listen carefully and try very hard to understand him. I got one word out of his 2 sentences: 'voucher'. When I asked Jim what he said, he acted as though he speaks Spanish fluently. He squinted his eyes, scrunched up his forehead, cocked his head off to the side slightly and said, "You can't understand him?" He easily recited almost word for word what the man said. I'm still totally baffled.

On the way out, I decided to ask the man how long he has worked there. His response, interpreted fully by Jim after we left, was that he had been with the company for a total of 42 years; worked at the Sarasota and Tampa locations and had been in St. Augustine for the last 10 years. Currently, he lived above the office and watched after the place. Wow! 42 years! That's impressive!

It was a great reminder for our marriage. Even though manning a parking lot probably wasn't what he thought he'd be doing after even 30 years of working for a company, the man is dedicated. He sits out there in the rain, lightning, cold and scorching hot Florida weather. Probably deals with lots of gringas like myself that don't understand a word he says. I certainly don't know all the details of his employment, but there had to be some sort of committment on his part to make it 42 years. Dedication, committment and hard work; ingredients for a marriage that lasts.

Jim, I love you and appreciate all you do for our family. You are without a doubt, the most giving man I've ever met and I am thankful for you. I look forward to many more years with you.