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Date Your Mate #4: 8th Anniversary

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Did I mention that last week was the crazy week to end all crazy weeks? Because it was. 1 night at home from Sunday to Saturday. That’s it. As a result, date nights were a bit goofy. See the rest of the dating fun at Simply Modern Mom’s 52 Dates project!

Fun Date: Tuesday was our OFFICIAL anniversary (as previously mentioned). 8 years, guys. Really? Crazy!! Anyhow, we had a special date night to celebrate. Matt dropped off the kids with my mom and we went to a reception for incoming Vanderbilt (where we met!) students from the Denver area. It was a fun schmoozy (though not boozy) event. It was interesting to hear how things had changed in the 12 years since we first started at Vandy and we met lots of nice people.

Then we went to dinner at House of Marrakesh, a nice little Moroccan restaurant (our rehearsal dinner was at a Moroccan restaurant many years ago!). It is one of about 28397 restaurants around here we have been wanting to try and for some reason I landed on that one as our choice. Since we had never been there before so we had their 5 course dinner to try out lots of stuff.

Appetizers were lentil soup, bread with honey oregano butter and a really great tomato cucumber salad. We also had the chicken bastella pastry which phyllo dough with meat and spices (cinnnamon, etc.) and has powdered sugar on top. It is strange, but wonderful. Then we had three main courses to choose from: lamb tagine, chicken tagine (my fave) and couscous with seven vegetables. Dessert was mint tea and baklava (flavored with rose water, I think). It was a nice little restaurant and I would happily go there again and I think Tabby would especially love it.

Everything clicked along well. We enjoyed talking with each other and taking some trips down memory lane. It was fun to actually have a date ON our anniversary for a change.

I did do better with photos this week and actually took a handful. But they all umm… sucked. Continue reading “Date Your Mate #4: 8th Anniversary”

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8 Years

8 years ago, I put on a white dress made to my specifications – “It should look like a t’shirt and a skirt” – and a pair of Birkenstock sandals (also white) and on the arm of my handsome father, walked up a hill and down an aisle to meet my charming soon-to-be husband. It was a sweet ceremony. During the ceremony, our officiant, Father Frank, asked the guests to raise their hands over us in blessing. And blessed we have been.

Almost 3000 days later, I still love and even LIKE the goofy guy I married. We have our little squabbles, but I can always count on him to love me and call me on my BS. And I am happy to do the same in return for him. We make a really awesome team and it is fun to look back over the years and see how much our life has changed and how much we’ve changed. I adore the two little people we’ve brought into the world and find them such an amazing outcome of the love Matt and I have for each other. I am pleased that we can give our kids the gift of parents that love each other and are a united front. I am happy that we share many interests and I will never be bored growing old with Matt.

Happy 8 Years, Mr. Nichols … and here’s to many many more!

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Date Your Mate #2: Candlelight Dessert and Garage Cleanup

Our second week of dates was a decided success. For our “Fun Date” I poured a couple of glasses of wine, set aside a couple of squares of dessert (chocolate peanut butter pie) and lit a couple of candles. We took them out on the patio to enjoy one of the perfect summer nights Coloradans are blessed with. We drank our wine (maybe more than one glass), ate our dessert, held hands and talked.

I always love being able to have an actual conversation with Matt where no one is interrupting … it’s always a treat. I don’t know what we talked about, or how long we were out there, but we both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

For our “work date” we re-organized our shelves in the garage. Matt had been wanting to tackle that particular project for a while and I don’t know why I’d been resisting (time, probably!) … I actually LIKE to organize, sick as that is. It is always cathartic to me to cull through boxes, get rid of stuff we don’t need and beautify a space. I love turning 5 boxes in to 3 or 2. The end-result of our organizing project is a much cleaner feeling garage. It still needs a bit of fine-tuning, but the vast majority is done.

More dates to see on Simply Modern Mom’s 52 Date Nights Project.