Happy Anniversary!

Today is our five-year wedding anniversary! Brian and I were married January 10th, 2004. For the last couple of months we have been talking about all the really big life changes that have happened in the last five years. Here is what we have come up with:

• I graduated from law school
• We got Dixie Sue
• Brian started working at Metro Dental
• I passed the bar exam
• I had one of my ovaries removed, which in turn started the kid wheel turning much more quickly than we had anticipated.
• Lauren was born
• I started my own law firm
• We completely renovated our kitchen in our old house (along with various other household projects)
• Josh was born
• We moved to Northfield
• We sold our own house in Cottage Grove
• We bought another house in Northfield for a rental
• We started a real estate company
• We had Logan

There are a LOT of life changes in there! It has been a wild ride and one I couldn't imagine taking with anyone other than Brian.

Brian and I met in our freshman english class at UW-Eau Claire. Our english teacher, Helen Dale, informed the class on the first day that two people in her freshman english classes ALWAYS end up getting married. That's funny now! Back then we thought, "whatever." We noticed each other right away in class. I was attracted to Brian because he wouldn't talk - I thought he was a tough guy. Little did I know it was because he had braces and didn't want to open his mouth! So, I sat down next to him and we became friends. We stayed friends for a year until we started dating. That's right, we started dating sophmore year of college. And, if you are doing any sort of math on this, we dated for EIGHT YEARS before getting married. That's a long time. Brian really wanted to finish dental school before getting engaged and I waited, rather impatiently!! So Brian brought a bag of aluminum cans (my dad's favorite) down to Austin to ask my dad for my hand in marriage. Think of that, I was basically traded for a bag of aluminum. We finally we got engaged in Door County, Wisconsin, set our wedding date for the winter so my dad wouldn't have to take off work (we all know how dedicated he is) and got hitched! It was such a wonderful day. The weather was good, light snow, but thirty degrees. Nice for the second week in January!

We were adament about not wanting to have the wedding taped. We did not want to look back and regret postures, facial expressions, and/or anything else. We just wanted to remember it the way we remembered it in our heads. My very good friend and bridesmaid Emily spent quite a bit of time trying to convince me otherwise. Her husband is a professional photographer (shout out to Dave!! See his work at http://www.davidjturner.com/) and she really wanted him to video the wedding and reception. We reluctantly agreed and I have to tell you that we are so grateful that they both knew better than us! Dave made us a DVD and it is the most wonderful thing. He has scenes from before the wedding, the wedding ceremony, and the reception. There is also a slideshow of all the great photos he took. The best thing about it is there are no moments where we want to hide when we watch it! For the first year of our marriage, we probably watched in a hundred times. Now we watch it for sure on our anniversary, if not more. Last year it was really fun to share with Lauren (Josh was too little to get it). This year I am really looking forward to sharing it with both of them and eventually Logan.

So, to my best friend, my husband, Happy Anniversary! Here's to many more!