Celebrations Part 1 "The decade"

Aah... summertime and the living is --- crazy! July marks our Anniversary, Cory's birthday and Alex's birthday. Not too bad, I suppose, since my other two kids are born on New Year's Day and Mother's Day so we've got some overlapping celebrations then too. Cory's vacation starts on Saturday so we're heading to Victoria to help my Grandma celebrate her 90th on Sunday. It's my birthday on Monday, and Tuesday we're going to Squamish to a birthday party for my friends' daughter. The following week we'll be in Kamloops helping our nephew celebrate his 2nd birthday. I'm already "caked out" and we're only partway through the festivities.

On July 11th, Cory and I hit a milestone. A decade. We celebrated our 10th Anniversary in PG. Mom and Dad watched the boys while we took Kirstin with us for steak and prawns at the Keg (Yummy!). Then we left Kirstin with them as well (aren't I so brave?) while we checked out the casino. I have a hard time leaving my kids with anyone, especially the nursing ones, so we've had very few date nights since Alex was born. We took all the kids back to the hotel for the night. We rented a lovely suite with a separate bedroom for the kids so we could stay up and watch an expensive pay per view movie - no, not that kind... "Baby Mama" with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. It was a pretty good "date" night, and I didn't suffer too much separation anxiety! :)

Here's what 10 years of marriage looks like... a little older and a little wider than we were in '98.

Here's what Cory gave me. The ring on top is my Anniversary ring. It rounds out my engagement ring and wedding band nicely. Now... he has to get to work on decorating my other hand! :)

I was pretty spoiled... I haven't had roses in YEARS! They were lovely, and our cat didn't eat them, either (Cory's excuse for never buying me flowers)!

And, to top off the evening... we both spent $20 at the casino. That was it. We just wanted to try it out, not go broke. $20 goes really, really quickly. We were there for about an hour. I'm happy to say, I don't have any desire to go back again any time soon, so my addictive personality didn't grasp onto this activity. This is a picture of, believe it or not, what Cory won with his first spin on a PENNY machine. He was impressed that he won 10,000 credits and said "Hey, I just won $10". Yeah, I'll admit, I laughed at him. I've always been better at math! :)