On April 18, Mike and I celebrated our five year wedding anniversary. Actually, scratch that…on our 5 year wedding anniversary, which happened to fall on a Saturday, Mike taught his online class for Georgetown from about 8:30 to 3:30 and I was on my own, outnumbered, with the wild ones–Caroline, Vivi, and Finnegan. (Finny gets a shout out in this category because he has been just so bad lately.) I am not complaining…it’s just a timing thing! Mike loves teaching and they pay him well for his time, so it’s a win-win.

I spent a fun (albeit tiring) day with the little ladies–breakfast picnic in the basement, a trip to our favorite destination–the Car Wash, and lots of time scootering. When Mike wrapped up early, we had a fun Zoom Gender Reveal Happy Hour for Will & Elise Kearney’s baby (a baby BOY will be joining the Kearney clan this Labor Day!!) and then we we decided to ask Suelen to watch the girls that night so we could “go out.” We snuck out the door around 7, bound for…somewhere??? Quarantine life is so exciting…

The sun was sinking low and we decided to brave the takeout window, grab our picnic, and head for the best sunset spot in town: the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. By the time we parked and walked to the gorgeous monument, I was freezing and had to go to the bathroom (of course! I’m only 8.5 months pregnant…) So we quickly ate our picnic and grabbed a few pictures of the pretty night:

Then we headed back to the car and home to our (thankfully sleeping) babies. Suelen laughed at us when we walked in the door 90 minutes after we left.

We read through our wedding and honeymoon albums and really enjoyed reliving the memories of these events. Five years seems like yesterday and a million years ago all at the same time.

One of the features of our wedding was that instead of table numbers, we made these little booklets and put them on the tables so people could leave us messages for our future anniversaries. We opened up this little book:

And on the very first page, we were both shocked when we saw this sweet note that Mike’s mom wrote to us, five years ago:

It was such a bittersweet moment. Of all the tables we could have put Mike’s parents, we happened to put them at Table 5. I think Mike really needed to see this sweet note and he needed to see it that day. It also made him feel good that we already had 2 kids, with one more on the way…talk about overachievers!

Five years. It’s brought us one new house, three new jobs, two babies, two lengthy cruise vacations (pre-kiddos), dozens of trips to Florida, three vacations sans-kiddos (the Keys, Nashville, + Grand Cayman), one quarantine, and a third (and final) pregnancy. We’ve fallen in love with London, the Pacific NW, and New England. We’ve explored 16 countries together.  We’ve learned to really cherish moments we get with our families, who we don’t see as often as we want. Together, we’ve made really good friends from our travels, daycare, preschool, neighborhood, work, and from other friends. We’ve learned that sometimes the greatest gift you can give your spouse is a tiny but meaningful act of service: a cup of coffee after someone was up all night with a sick kid, or a glass of wine after the last kid is finally in bed, a sandwich (which Mike always cuts in triangles). We care more about date nights and less about presents, and make sure our kids know we love them, but we love each other first.

I saw a sign the other day that summed it up: You & Me. We Got This. Cheers to all of our adventures together and those yet to come, Sweet Boy!