Happy Anniversary

Seven years ago today we were in Seattle standing in the beautiful Washington Park Arboretum overlooking an incredible lake that reminded me of a Monet painting. It was there that a local minister performed our commitment ceremony. Our story had greatly interested him and we were blessed to be able to meet him. To add to the beauty we had the most incredible flowers fresh from Pike Place Market that morning. I've never seen flowers so beautiful! Then there were many kayakers that had stopped to witness the event and a nearby gentleman who volunteered to take pictures of the whole group.

That is a trip that I'll never forget! The days leading up to our ceremony were memorable. The day of our ceremony even more so. The days following spent on Orcas Island and the Bed & Breakfast were like no other.

Our lives have changed so much over those 7 wonderful years! I am so blessed to have all that I have and so grateful that I can share it all with Carie.

Seven years ago we were celebrating in style.

Now we are celebrating with a new roof! Unfortunately the roof is way more costly than our getaway 7 years ago. It will be painful to write that check! If only it would feel as luxurious! But hey, the waterfall in the bathroom is no longer. I guess that is luxury, right? We had our first thunderstorm in a long time pass through as we were waking up this morning. Both Abby and Ellie (independently) ran to the bathroom to check it out and announced with great excitement that it was dry! This was a huge deal to them. Clearly we all had a bit of anxiety over the water leaking into our home.

The roofers knocked it out yesterday afternoon and wrapped up at about 8:00. Thank goodness we had plans to go to Abby & Ellie's soccer game so we were able to escape from the noise. We also made an executive decision to go out to eat in (relatively) peace and quiet rather than return home to eat the delicious dinner Carie had prepared. She started it before the roofers arrived! We returned home at about 7:30 when they were putting the finishing touches on their work. We successfully missed a large part of the noise. Our neighbors weren’t as lucky.

It feels good to have this done, really really good. It might not be a luxury vacation on a secluded island, but somewhere along the way our priorities shift.

Before... Between the sun and the truck you can't really see how bad the roof was. Not to mention, the leakage area was on the backside of the house.

After... We are pleased! The silver lining... We got upgraded to 35 year shingles and only had to pay for the upgrade from 25 to 30 and not to 35!