10 Years And Counting

 

Ten years ago today Chris and I got married under a huppah by a Rabbi who promised me he would focus his ceremony on love rather than religion.  We, along with our 170 guests, enjoyed a beautiful sunny day atop the hill that is Point Loma overlooking the San Diego coastline and ocean.  The wedding itself was planned down to every detail by Chris and myself. We wanted the wedding to be a big party in a beautiful location and ten years later we still have wonderful memories of that day. 

Today we are celebrating our marriage milestone at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn.  With the beautiful suites, the bathing ritual and peaceful grounds, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to stay anywhere else.  I was up at 5am out of pure excitement about three days sans kids and enjoying some relaxation and nice meals.  I am never up at 5am.  It was like Christmas in June for me. 

We started our getaway at Chateau Carneros and as we sat out on the patio sipping our sparkling wine Chris said it perfectly: “There is something very cathartic about just sitting here looking at the lines in the hills.   You know people travel from all over the world to be here and we just drove an hour.”  We were fortunate indeed.

We got to our hotel and Chris, in typical Chris fashion, managed to get the front desk to wave three days of bathing ritual usage fees without even asking.  And to boot, there was a bottle of champagne and a beautiful fruit plate waiting for us when we got back to the room. All it took was just a little of that Chris charm is all. 

Since this is my 10 year anniversary, I would like to take a moment to provide a top 10 list of reasons I love and reasons I married Chris:

1.  Chris makes me laugh.  His sense of humor is stellar and this quality is of utmost importance to me.  Perhaps it is because I grew up with my dad’s witty, dry and often corny and crass sense of humor that I value this quality in a person.
2. Chris is kind and always willing to do something random and generous for someone else. 
3. Chris’s charm has old ladies squealing in glee wherever he goes. Chris’s mom says that when Chris was very young he could walk into a room of adults and carry on an adult conversation.  Oh yes, Chris has a way with people, which is how wherever we go we get the best room, the best table, and inevitably, something for free.
4. Chris is the best dad.  He would do absolutely anything in the world for them.  He says probably on a daily basis, “I love my babies,” even though they aren’t babies anymore.  To him, they will all always be his babies. 
5. Chris is the best husband.  I truly don’t know what I would’ve done without him supporting me through the past couple of years.  When I am being “Debbie Downer” Chris is there to pick me up and remind me how fortunate we are and how everything in life is going to work out great. 
6. The fact that when Chris gets a headache he wants to get an MRI to make sure he doesn’t have a brain tumor.
7. Chris likes to shop and decorate and do some of the fun things that women do which make him fun to be around.
8. He once fit 8 ounces of pizza dough into his large-sized mouth, deeming him the record holder for many years at the Woodstock’s Pizza in San Luis Obispo (where we both worked during our first years of college).
9. Chris reads and writes poetry
10. He is wicked smart

So happy anniversary to a wonderful husband. . . looking forward to many more fun-filled years.  As I write this we are driving in the car from Healdsburg.  Isn’t it amazing that I can publish a blog post through the Internet while I am driving?  I love technology. 

Ava-ism:

The other day in the car Chris spent about 5 minutes teaching Ava about homonyms and going over the different examples of homonyms.  He told Ava that the word means two words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meaning.  Some examples we all came up with were “where and wear” and “there and their”.  So a few days ago I said, “oh Ava, I came up with a great . . . . what is that word. . . the one where the two words sound the same. . . “and Ava said, “oh you mean Homonym?”  In a hundred years I probably wouldn’t have come up with that word but it took my 5-year-old two seconds to pull it out of her memory bank.  So, I said “yeah! That’s it!  My homonym is “whole and hole”.  Ava said, “whole like the whole world or I’m going to eat a whole pizza and the other hole is like the hole in a sock.”  Exactly.

Until next time, the mothership is signing off.