Three Years

Eric and I had a wonderful anniversary last week! I just can't believe it has already been three years for us. Time flies when you're having fun, apparently!

The day of our anniversary was a busy one for me. A few weeks ago, I came up with a plan for Eric's anniversary gift and was ready to put it in motion. My idea was this: I would make a scrapbook of our marriage, with a page for each year. Every year I would fill a page with my favorite pictures of us from that year, mementos, stickers, etc. My hope was/is that someday, at our 50th Anniversary Party, we can have this scrapbook sitting out for people to flip through - you will be able to see our whole life together in just 50 pages. I figured it may not be realistic to expect to have the time to make a big fancy page every year, but I thought even the way I approach each year's entry will say so much about where we are in our life together. For example, maybe the year we have our first child will be crazy and I won't have the time to put a lot of effort into a page. But really, for that year, all I have to do is glue a picture of the new kid to a piece of paper and that pretty much says it all, you know? I just think it will be a great way to look back on our marriage, and maybe my kids and grandkids will get a kick out of it someday, too. I know I would love it if my grandparents had something like that - how cool would that be to look through?

To tie this gift idea into the traditional third anniversary gift of leather, I ordered a nice leather scrapbook online to put my first three pages in. However, the shipping on said scrapbook took forever and the thing didn't show up at our door until the morning of our anniversary! So I spent all day frantically cutting and gluing and decorating my three pages. I must say, it was quite a challenge to choose which pictures would go on each page, because we have done so many incredible things in our three years. It was hard to fit it all in! But I finished up just in time for Eric to come home from work. Success!

To celebrate, we went out to dinner at Puttanesca, a local Italian restaurant we have been meaning to try. We had a delicious meal: red wine, fried calamari, chicken parmigiana and white clam linguine. Yum! We also had a great time reminiscing about the last three years and reflecting on how our relationship has changed and grown since we have been married. It was great conversation.

We didn't get a photo of us together at dinner, so this collage of each of us individually will have to do.

After dinner we walked home, stopping to pick up a bottle of champagne on the way. When we got home we opened that champagne and exchanged cards and gifts. Eric gave me a lovely card, in which he wrote some really nice things. Then I gave him his gift, and as soon as he opened it, he had me open my gift from him. He had been describing his gift as more of an "idea" than a gift, so I was interested to see what it was.

Care to guess what it was?

It was the exact same thing I gave him.

Eric took manila file folders from work, one for each year of marriage, and inside each he glued pictures from that year and a list of some of the year's most memorable moments. He said he intended it to be a sample of a scrapbook we could make together, but I had already made it! I felt badly that I had gone ahead and done it when we could have done it together, but Eric assured me I did a great job. I decided to incorporate his idea of the list of memorable moments into my scrapbook "vision," as well - now in the future, we'll make a list like that and put it on the page opposite my photo page. I was just so touched (and surprised!) that Eric thought to do the same thing! How is that even possible? That boy is a keeper.

Two of Eric's file folders, and two pages of my scrapbook.

Apparently I made Eric feel insecure about his crafting skills, but I thought he did a great job.

We spent some time looking through all the pictures and comparing our two scrapbooks. We really picked up on a lot of the same memorable moments in both books, which was neat to see.

After our gift exchange we settled in to finish off the champagne and watch our wedding video, which is always great fun. It was just such a wonderful day.

And that was our third anniversary! I am so lucky to be married to such an incredible man.