Happy Anniversary!

Summer time just got away from me and I didn't post about our anniversary... We celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary this year. Time has been good to us and we are so much more in love now than the day we said, "I do". Oh how little we knew what lay ahead of us that first day... Figuratively speaking we've hiked to the virtual top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and to the depths of the Grand Canyon together in the last 15 years. Learning all along the way the virtues of charity, purity, faith, humility, meekness, honesty, knowledge, and integrity. Now we often wonder how amazing a marriage that has lasted for 50 years must be. And how a heart must break after that many years of love when one of them passes away, oh how I dread that day ever coming, and yet as the years speed along, I can only imagine in 70 years that day will be here oh too soon. This anniversary was the best yet. When Ryon looked at me, I knew he really knows who I am. All the many, many interests I have, my talents, my goals, my children, my parents, my desires, my experiences, my failures, my faults, my shortcomings, and everything that makes me, me. And when I look at him I see the father of all my children, his kindness, his generosity, his faith, his strength, his gentleness, his desire to succeed, his family, his past, his future, and everything it is that makes him uniquely Ryon, unlike anyone else, and extraordinary! I know it is frowned upon by our culture to marry young, but I can't see what I've missed out on, yet. Maybe by the time I've turned 50 I'll have gotten wise to what the world knows that I've been missing, but until then I'll enjoy being married for almost 1/2 my life, to the absolutely most handsome, talented, intelligent, capable man I've ever known!

Every anniversary we reminisce about all of our past anniversaries... Our first, we weren't together, Ryon was at his father's wedding (same date as ours)...and his cousin's (Brian & Jennifer). Second...Savanah had just been born, we lived in Flagstaff...went to a beautiful French restaurant ate a 5 course meal, where I commented on the waitress' cute little skirt (the one around the dripping water picture...not to be confused with the cute LITTLE skirt around her cute little bottom-RYON! I hadn't even noticed she was wearing a cute little skirt-BLONDE?) I'm sure you don't really want to hear about all of them...some years we can recall all of them with details and some years we're pretty hazy, this year we didn't miss one. Ryon asked me to assemble a scrapbook of all our anniversaries this year...my first thought was, even if I don't get them all together up to this point we could easily celebrate another 50, it could be pretty fun in a few decades to look back and see what we were up to now.

This year I literally slaved in the kitchen for 8 hours making the most amazing meal any of us have ever eaten! At 5:00pm the boys dawned their suits and greeted Ryon at the door with white towels over their arms to seat him at a beautiful table set with an IRONED (thanks Sister Prince) table cloth, set with 3 vases of fresh cut flowers from our yard, china, and multiple forks for multiple courses! for his amazing 3 course dinner. Which included:

Creamy Butternut Squash Soup
Stone Baked Ecce Panis Olive Batard (bread)

Beef Wellington with Green Peppercorn Sauce
Warm Wilted Winter Greens With Balsamic Vinaigrette & Roasted
Walnuts
Roasted Fingerling Potatoes with Fresh Herbs and Garlic

Decadent Chocolate Cake
Blackberry Reduction (seedless)
Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache
French Vanilla Ice Cream
Whipped Cream & Raspberries

Pretty much everything had a sauce or cream or dressing... Savanah was the accomplished chef of the evening! She pulled everything from the oven on time, assembled beautiful plates that arrived like clock work, and kept the kitchen staff quiet and busy! I was so impressed with her abilities in the kitchen that night! The kids ABSOLUTELY love it when Ryon and I have special dinners when they wait on us and we eat somewhere special away from the kitchen. And honestly, we love it, too!