Brian and I celebrated 25 years of marriage this summer.
Have you ever approached a special date and you just weren’t sure how to really celebrate it?
Do you plan a weekend just for you? Do you invite your community to celebrate with you? Do you celebrate with family?
The closer we got to this summer, Brian and I realized that we all just wanted to do a whole lot of little things to renew and revisit our story. Brian and I had been so good about telling Julia, Nate, and Riley all about where we met and how we went from Texas to Arizona and back again. But we realized the younger two didn’t really know our story.
First, I looked up DeGray Lake, Arkansas, where we spent our honeymoon. The state park and hotel became our first stop. In 1999, we didn’t take a camera and it was before cell phones for us, so this would be the first time that Mary Alice and Sebastian.
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I had this memory of a fish place. To get there, you drive over a bridge and then wrapped around and it was just below and snuggled into the side of the bridge on a lake. For the longest time I had decided that I probably conflated a few restaurants that we ate at on our honeymoon. The second afternoon, we drove the kids into Hot Springs and as we drove over Lake Catherine, I gasped – there it was! After all these years it was still there. We planned on returning for dinner and it was just as wonderful as I remembered! Fried shrimp, hush puppies, sweet tea – so much goodness!
On our actual anniversary weekend, we headed down to College Station, Texas. We wanted to return to Saint Mary’s. On a whim, I asked my parents (who live near Houston) if they wanted to meet us. They jumped in the car and met us for Mass and dinner! It was such a fun, last minute celebration and it was perfect for our stage of life right now.
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As always, I was reminded that Brian is a gift. He loves adventuring and he is patient when I want to make memories.
I’m so thankful that the Lord, in His amazing goodness, saw fit for us to become friends and find our vocation in one another.
