five!

oh boy! it's taken me almost a month to post about our FIFTH anniversary! i know to a lot of people five years isn't that long, but i still can't believe we've been married five whole years. time really does fly! my parents were kind enough to babysit so we could go out and celebrate. 

to commemorate such a special occasion i even straightened my hair. i honestly could not remember the last time i straightened it (too unbearable to blow dry it in my hot house this summer). special day indeed!

after a disappointing dinner on our fourth anniversary we headed to the cherry cricket where it was guaranteed we would enjoy our dinner. the cherry cricket is a local favorite and has been featured on the travel channel and the food network. so while it wasn't necessarily romantic,  it was dang good food! and that's what we like!

after dinner we headed to another local favorite, bonnie brae ice cream. no joke, on any given night if you drive by the ice cream shop there will be a line. but the ice cream is yummy and the servers must be used to the constant line because they move you through quickly.

there was a one man band playing and so we sat and enjoyed the music, our ice cream and the beautiful night. 

throughout the evening we talked about our favorite memories from each year of marriage. it was fun to reminisce and hear what the other said. it was also horrifying how bad my memory was ("now what happened during our ____ year of marriage?!") poor, poor memory.

we decided not to do presents because we are going on an anniversary trip to nyc this fall... although it has to be postponed a bit now :( but i wanted to do something to surprise him and tell him how much i love him. i saw this idea on pinterest and decided i would attach a favorite memory from each year of our marriage to each balloon. and then i thought it would be even better to attach a picture of that memory to each balloon. but then i couldn't narrow it down to just 1 memory per year, and in the end, 5 pictures turned into 41! oops! so i scrapped the balloon idea and just attached the picture and memory to ribbon.

our anniversary was on a saturday this year which made pulling this off a little more difficult. normally i would have put it up while he was at work but since that wasn't an option i stayed up late the night before, watching the olympics and moving my chair all around the room hanging pictures. the whole thing was pretty time consuming (choosing the pictures, writing the memory, printing, cutting, assembling and hanging) but it was so much fun to be reminded of so many of our fun times over the past 5 years and was totally worth it. 

dave got up the next morning for an early morning run and was quite surprised by what he walked out into!
below are the pictures/memories i chose:

i also made him a "love mix." most of the songs have significance to us as a couple, but i threw in a couple of love songs that i have loved for years. i have always been a romantic and i listened to plenty of love songs during my growing up and single years, dreaming of the boy i would one day marry. it was fun to listen to some of those same songs, only this time thinking not just about some boy, but my boy and the life and family we have created together! 

dave gave me beautiful flowers (boy do i love flowers). but my favorite thing was ending the night watching a video about our 5 years together that he spent months making (he is clearly not the procrastinator he wife is). it was such a wonderful surprise and it will be something fun to watch and share with our kids in the years to come. 

i can't wait for all that is yet to come! 

i love you baby!