7 Years and Counting

December 16th, 2006 was, and probably forever will be, my absolute favorite day of my life!

That was the day I married my best friend and became Mrs. Van Gelder.

That morning, I woke up very early to meet my fiancé to take one last run together as Morgan Albini.  After our run in the dark, we sat on a bench in front of my parent's house and talked about the day, our past, and our future together.

Phil said to me, "no matter what happens today, at the end of the day and for the rest of our lives, it will be you and me." 

There were a few bumps on our wedding day.  It was supposed to be an outdoor wedding.  It was storming.  We quickly moved it inside.  I couldn't find my dress to wear leaving the reception, so I left in my wedding gown and made a pit stop at my parents' house to ditch the dress on the way to our honeymoon.  But, overall it was a perfect day.

7 years later we have grown from 2 to 4, and things still aren't going off without a hitch, but it is still just me and him.

To celebrate this year, I thought I would plan a trip down memory lane and we could celebrate with out kids.  We had dinner at Moe's {where we had our first meal together}.  Then I thought we could make a new memory painting pottery. 

That went over like a turd in a punch bowl. 

The kids had no interest in painting and the second Emrie finished painting her ornament black {she says it is a Christmas color} she began interpretive dancing in the store.  Phil had to take Aven out in the snow because she was like a bull in a china shop, and I rushed as fast as I could to finish painting my mug so we could get the heck out of there! 

Needless to say, the rest of the date I had planned {going to get hot chocolate and drive to see Christmas lights, which was something Phil and I had done while dating} did not happen because our girls were well on their way to a meltdown and needed to go to bed immediately. 

Our backup plan was to have lunch together, just the two of us, on Monday while our girls were at preschool.

Monday morning there were 4 inches of snow, preschool was on a 2 hour delay, and Phil's car got stuck in the driveway.  We had to wake our kids up so I could drive an hour to take Phil to work so I could have the car for later that day.

Lunch didn't work out.

Circumstances like these are just a reminder of what a great team we are.  I probably didn't see our anniversary going this way when we got married, but even then I knew, no matter what challenges came our way, we would face them together, as teammates, husband and wife, best friends, YOU AND ME!

{I am really glad I have this mug to commemorate our 7th anniversary. It makes me laugh just thinking about that evening}