10 years

Celebrating ten years was simple and sweet. I knew Max had something big planned in the near future so the actual anniversary day ( a Thursday) was a perfectly simple day!

After taking Charlie to the bus stop, Miles and I made one of Max's favorite breakfasts. When we went to surprise him with his breakfast, he surprised us by having a bandage on his nose, just like the real bandage he surprised me with on our wedding day after he broke his nose at his Bachelor Party. It made us laugh, our boys always like hearing the story of how daddy broke his nose. 

Anyway, we ate up then it was time to take Miles to his last day of swim, ironically his last day of swim last time he had lessons was on our anniversary as well. He's much better at swimming now!

Anyway, in the evening, we got a babysitter and got to go out on date! I even did some fancy hair, thanks to my new curling wands...I think I'm finally starting to figure out how to curl my hair! ha! So it needed to be documented. Along with that dirty mirror. (Hopefully I'll be able to look back once our kids are all grown and think, wow, the mirrors were really dirty, and I don't really miss that aspect of having young kids)

Anyway, our wonderful babysitter came, we made our way to the Portland temple. Exactly where we were 10 years before.

In the temple, we participated in a sealing ordinance. This is where you can seal or marry people that have already passed on, so that they can be married for the eternities and stay united as families. It is the same ordinance that Max and I participated in on our wedding day, to seal us together beyond death and that our children can remain with us throughout the eternities. While we were there, we were reminded on the promises we made to each other and to our Heavenly Father on our wedding day. We were reminded of how we need to raise and teach our children. It was a beautiful yet a simple experience hearing those words again at a much different stage in life. We have gone to the temple to participate in sealings multiple times since we've been married but for some reason this time was extra special, and good reminder of what matters most when raising our children. Anyway, it was perfect and we enjoyed the springtime walk around the temple when we were done.

After a leisurely walk, we made our way to dinner. We had a gift card for the Cheesecake factory. So that was fun to pick out some good food and share a piece of cheesecake and discuss the excitement of the past and our hopes for the future. 

And then we got home. (Max had mysteriously been carrying a red box around and had yet to show it to me.) he took our babysitter home then he had me sit at the table to open this mysterious box. To preface, I have known since last year that Max has wanted to plan a trip for us for our 10th anniversary. I was skeptical of something like this happening since we have 3 young kids, and my mom works full time and can't take time off to watch them. Max said he wanted to make it happen and would find a way and then surprise me with the details. Being the anxious person that I am, I told him he could do this but I needed to know who was watching our kids and what the dates would be. (I'm probably the worst person ever to throw a surprise for.) So, for the last 6 months I've known we were going on some sort of trip and Max had dropped a couple clues (Including: we would need our passports, we are going on Alaska airlines, it's a Spanish speaking country, and there would be 80+ degree water) I knew I could have figured it out with a couple google searches but it was kind of exciting that he wanted to surprise me! Anyway, he managed to keep it a secret until our actual anniversary and he decided it was time to tell me so we could do the rest of the preparations together. So he gave me this box and told me that he wished he had put more time in putting it together. Inside were these face little hair flowers, a hair brush, and flight plans.

So...the flight plans were super confusing. It said we were going to Liberia and I was almost certain that wasn't a Spanish speaking country. Max thought it was hilarious that I was confused and just kept going along with it...It took awhile for him to reveal that Liberia (pronounced very differently than the country in Africa) is an airport in Costa Rica. Once I officially knew, Max spilled all the secret plans and preparations he had been doing  and he instantly felt so great that he didn't have to keep it a secret anymore. The rest of the evening was spent with him telling me about all the research he had done and what people had recommended and we started organizing and laying out our trip. I actually loved how he did this. It was great that he did all the initial research then I just got to plug in the things that I wanted to do, I actually love this kind of planning and it was so fun to customize our trip for us and over the 2 weeks up until we were in the country we switched our plans around to make it the best trip ever!

So that was how we spent our day, celebrating 10 years married. Definitely the best decision we've ever made!