A Decade

Yesterday Dave and I quietly celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. 10 years! It's cliche, but the time really has gone so fast. We met less than 11 years ago, at the new Wal-Mart as it was just being built - Dave at the Tire and Lube Express, a job he secured right after moving down from New York to be with his recently transplanted family, and myself at the Vision Center, a job I took while taking a semester off from college (it's been a long semester!), and one that proved to be very interesting, actually. The rumor mill at the store had me convinced he was engaged - the blonde I saw him with in the store was his sister, but I didn't know that then! - so I met his first attempt at asking me out with cold rebuff. With fact sifted out of the fiction later, I agreed to go to lunch with him, and the next week to a UNC basketball game (they lost embarrasingly, but that was the beginning of his indoctrination in the Tar Heel way). After that, he began simply spending time with my family; in fact, he spent every evening at my house. I'm sure we were different in countless ways than just about any other family he had known before, but he must have liked us, and somewhere along the way, fell in love with me. I, in turn, was taken with his down-to-earth sincerity, and when he asked me to marry him just a little over a month of getting to know each other, I wasn't surprised - or opposed. I said yes, and amazingly, my parents said yes. (While it worked out for us, I hope my daughter doesn't expect the same kind of understanding.) Six months later, we were married. One of the perks of being the oldest (oldest child, oldest grandchild) is that everything you do is novel, and everyone shows up for it. Everyone (except for my grandfather, who I had once hoped who give me away, but who had died four years earlier) came to my wedding, and that was fun - my extended family is pictured above. All the girls I loved, representing friendship from various stages of my life, stood with me, and even though I had my own - ahem - bride moment, for the most part, everything was perfect.

Since then we've certainly had our share of mistakes and hardships, but we've also accomplished quite a bit in this decade. Fortunately we both believe that children are worth far more than money, and so we have invested a good deal more in the former than in the latter. Four children in a decade is not too shabby, certainly. It's funny, though, that in some circles, people are astounded by that figure - it might as well be fourteen, for their reactions - while in others I am quite behind the game. In any case, we are proud of our lively crew, and of the home God has provided for us. So, to my husband - I love you, and thank you for these ten years!