10 Year Anniversary

If you follow me on Facebook, you’ve no doubt seen a few (a lot of) posts about our 10 year anniversary trip to Paris and Venice. And if you’ve known us for the past 10 years, you know doubt remember that we never had a honeymoon because our marriage began in a hospital room. We always said we’d have the wedding we spent 15 months planning when we reached year 10, but after 3 kids and pets and mortgages and such, time away together seemed like a much better plan. I did, however, want to see what I may have looked like as a bride so we decided to get dressed up as sort-of-bride-and-groom for a photo shoot in Paris. Honestly, it was our favorite part of the whole trip. I’d say we laughed at my awkwardness in front of the camera (even the photographer was in on it) for a good 70% of it. More on that later.

So although we knew we were taking a trip, this trip came out of nowhere. I’d convinced Husband to do a Caribbean destination because 1)It’s close and 2)It’s affordable (as far as vacations go). We were out for breakfast one morning discussing the plans when he hit me with “Let’s go to Paris” to which I responded “Boy, please”. When he asked why not, I had to admit that it was a combination of that’s just a thing we don’t do and I’m terrified of being in the air that long. In keeping with the household rule that if you’re afraid to do something, you have to do it, we ended up in Paris and I am so so glad we did. We’ve been back for 2 days and I’m looking at these photos and replaying the entire trip in my head, but I STILL can’t believe this actually happened. None of this was anything I’d imagined 17 years ago when I opened that secret admirer note. I don’t really even know how to express the gratitude I feel for this trip, for our marriage, for this life. But I’ll keep trying.

 ^I’d read in reviews that they hand out free tastes of food and spirits throughout your meal, so I wasn’t surprised when risotto and a shot glass of what had to have been rubbing alcohol ended up on our table. But I was pretty surprised that the chef’s feelings were so hurt that I didn’t finish my pasta. 

We took a public boat from the airport in Venice to our hotel. It was super cheap, but slow because it made several stops to other town centers. S was determined to pay literally ten times as much for a private water taxi back to the airport so that he wouldn’t have to wait or be around any other people. I protested but realized it was only fair for us to each choose once. I have to admit, it was pretty neat.

The photos below are from our shoot with Alex who I kept calling Pierre by accident. He did an excellent job considering how many times he had to hear me scream WHAT DO I DO WITH MY HANDS AND MY FACE AND MY LEGS? I really don’t understand why it’s so easy for me to tell clients exactly what to do with their bodies, but I can not make my own body do those things. It’s like all my everything just locks up. He gave us about 30 photos, but these are the only ones where he caught me behaving like a normal person. It’s a miracle, actually.