4th Anniversary Celebration

I already posted that David and I celebrated our anniversary on Wednesday (June 5th = such a beautiful day). However, I didn't post about HOW we celebrated. It was such a fun evening. David came home from work a little bit early... early enough that I hadn't finished wrapping his presents so I locked myself in my craft room to finish them up. I'd had a really crazy day, Lydia was still napping, and I was a mess. David counted out 450 envelopes for a Red Ladder client to come and pick up while I got myself presentable and curled my hair. It seems silly to want to remember that - but I was just so grateful that after such a busy day David was happy to come home and help with some of the monotonus tasks before celebrating our anniversary - because really... thats how we live our life - always enjoying our time together even if we are running errands, counting envelopes, or doing other boring yet necessary things. It was perfect. 

We try to make a point to take a picture of ourselves at each anniversary. I can't believe how much bigger Lydia is this year vs. last year. Even though in this picture she still looks much smaller than she does other times. (It's because she isn't wearing a bow. Something about her bald little head just shouts "baby".) I love that this picture is in our happy little house. Hopefully the first of many many anniversaries celebrated here.  

David and I typically keep our gift budget pretty small. Neither of us have very long gift lists most of the time, and it works for us. I love our little presents and the thoughtfulness behind them. 

  However, before presents - it was time for dinner! We thought about just staying at home and then getting a babysitter and going out to dinner on the weekend, but we decided to just go with all three of us. We had been wanting to try out the new burger place in the Traverse Mountain Outlets - and so we headed across the freeway to see what Johnny Rockets had to offer. First of all, can I say how much I love being so close to the outlets? Not that we ever go shopping there because they are all stores that are way out of our price range...  but it is so nice to have a couple of food places close by. And the fact that the outlets don't add any additional traffic to our neighborhood while increasing the value of our home is awesome. But back to our celebration:

  

Dinner was really yummy and such a fun environment. Everything was decorated as a classic hamburger diner, but technology was integrated in really cool ways. For example there was a 5 cent juke box on each table that you could select songs from the table and they would play. Our waiter wore a little 50's waiter hat, but then he took our order on his handheld tablet. It was awesome. David and I both got big burgers with fries and onion rings and we brought some pasta for Lydia to eat. 

After dinner we decided to take a little walk around the outlets. We had a great time and found a fun kitchen supply store that we walked around for quite a while dreaming about what we would buy if we had an unlimited budget. On the list: brand new tupperware, matching kitchen dishtowels/rags/hotpads, a SodaStream, and many other fun kitchen gadgets. 

Then it was home just in time to put Lydia down for bed (after her nightly bath of course). She was such a sweet girl and went down immediately, which was nice because David and I were ready to open our presents! I'm not super good at waiting for surprises and when I see a present for me - the urge to open it immediately is almost too much to handle. Even more so - I was so excited for David to open his gifts!  It's not as much about the actual gifts as it is the thoughts of appreciation and celebration,  like, "I love you and I love that we've been married for four years... and I want you to know that." 

  

When we first got married, David told me about this thing that he wanted with the words "Be Outstanding, Be Organized, Be Determined, Be Diligent" on it. I got really excited about it and surprised him with the vinyl lettering. However, I wasn't exactly sure how he wanted the end result to be - so I gave him the vinyl and then let it sit on the backburner for ... oh... three years. But when we moved and I found the vinyl as I was unpacking - I knew that this is what I wanted to do for him to celebrate our anniversary. It took me a while to find exactly what I wanted - but I finally ended up buying an 8 foot  4"x4" post and having them cut it at the store. I sanded it, painted it, and applied the vinyl and I am so happy with the way that it turned out. He was SO surprised. I hope that he loves it. I also bought him "The Tourist" DVD. We watched it on vacation in St. George several years ago (on our clearplay) and LOVED it. Such a fun show. When we saw it at Target for $5, it was all I could do to convince him not to buy it. I came back right after and purchased it so that I could surprise him with it. I also wrapped up some candy and a Redbox DVD (I had very little of our $20 gift budget left) for us to enjoy that night. So fun. 

For Mother's Day, David gave me a sweet necklace with a pearl on it. For our anniversary, he added three charms - S, D, & L. He wrote sweet notes about how the D stands for David because he loves me so much, the S stands for Shantel because I am so special, and the L stands for Lydia because she is blessed to have me as her mom. The notes were so sweet and seriously made me cry. He is such a thoughtful boy and I absolutely love my new charm necklace. 

 

And so, that about wraps things up. I just love this boy and love our sweet life together. 

Happy Four Years!