Summer Is:

Our wedding anniversary. (Yes, that's the same photo I used last year. It's my favorite photo from the wedding.) So, nine years ago today, on a sunny, not-too-hot morning in August, my husband and I said "I do."

For fun, I thought I'd share nine things about us today.

1. When we met, I was 19 and he was 29. It kind of freaked my parents out a little bit, but they got past it pretty quickly.

2. I pursued him for about 4 months before he finally asked me out.

3. Our first official date was to an Indian restaurant. We now have a tradition of going to that same restaurant every year after church on Christmas Eve. (No, our first date was not on Christmas Eve. It was in September.) Our wee ones love it, and we love the chance to reminisce about that night when we were both so nervous. ;)

4. He proposed to me on a stormy night in late October. We had plans that night to go to a local amusement park that had reopened that week to do Halloween stuff. (You could ride the rides but they also had haunted houses going on.) {Halloween is my favorite holiday. He knew me well to plan a proposal during a Halloween bash.} He says he planned to pop the question on the ferris wheel, but I'm not sure how that would have worked, all scary and shaky up there. Anyway, it was too stormy to go, so we were in the car trying to come up with a Plan B for the evening, and he just blurted it out and pulled a ring out of his pocket. It was so, so sweet. We don't have the car anymore, though, which makes me kind of sad.

(By the way, I used to love all things scary, like haunted houses, until Elisabeth was born, when I very abruptly started hating them.)

5. Our children both have family names: Elisabeth is a family name on my side (going back at least 6 generations now), and James is a family name on my husband's side.

6. We are totally boring people.

7. One time we thought it would be fun to make a list of every movie we'd gone to in the theater together. It was in the hundreds! We made the list 5 years ago, and I don't think we've really added any to it since then. ;)

8. We did not live together before we were married.

9. I am two inches taller than him. I usually wear Danskos, though, so I tend to look even more than two inches taller. We're both so used to it that we don't really even notice anymore.

Looking forward to a bit of celebrating today. Hope your day is lovely and bright!