5th Anniversary, Part 1 of 3

One of the joys of this blog is that we get to record for Magpie all the highs and lows of our life as we waited as patiently as possible for her to arrive in our world, in our arms. I feel fortunate to be able, as part of this tortuous wait, to write our thoughts, to share what the wait was like, to let her into our lives in a really unique way. This weekend we began the first of 3 weekends to celebrate our 5th Anniversary, not quite what we had planned a few months ago though!

I’ll have to digress here for a moment. We were married late October and ever since our wedding in Vegas, (yes, Vegas, no Elvis involved) we said we’d always go back for our 5th Anniversary.

Well, a lot changes in 5 years time. We’ve loved, lost, lived, cried, laughed, experienced the void of life that is death, we’ve grown closer than 2 peas in a pod. And in those 5 years we’ve continued to learn the value of give and take in a relationship. As part of that, we decided not to spend our 5th in Vegas staying at our dream hotel (for Vegas), not the Bellagio, not the Venetian, but the Paris hotel. Eric wanted to stay there ever since we set foot in it, and we looked forward to going back.

But this year, things got hectic, the relocation, new jobs, the house delay, the expected ‘unexpected’ costs that spring up in a relo. And the math just didn’t add up. E’s bike was reaching it’s limit and it was either a new bike or 3 days in Vegas… no, that’s not how much we would have spent in Vegas, but we couldn’t do both. So I gave up Vegas and we purchased the new motorcycle. For me it was an easy trade, we’d use the bike so much in our future (and already have used it a lot) and so Vegas could wait.

I told E he’d need to take me to Paris for real for our 10th instead! Fair trade huh?

So back to the first of 3 weekends. Saturday we spent in Sturbridge Village. Yeah, in the midst of unpacking we needed desperately a break. So we went first to the Public House Bakery, ohhhh, the goodies there. Worth the drive from our house alone, we stocked up, literally and put some in the freezer, then onto Sturbridge Village itself. We relaxed in all the glory of an incredible fall foliage season amidst the old world of Sturbridge Village. It’s a place where the village of a new England pilgrim style town is preserved, including the buildings, the craftwork, the occupations, etc. It’s magical and fun. A place we both really connect with for some reason. Magpie was a constant in the conversation, ‘hey, imagine taking Magpie here’, ‘could you picture Magpie doing that?’… and so on.

I took several photos today hoping to find the one place at Sturbridge Village that I took a photo at nearly 20 years ago. I had it enlarged to 11 x 17 and framed for my mom for Christmas one year, it was one of my best pictures ever, but no matter how hard we tried we couldn’t find it. It didn’t matter, every step of our day was filled with beautiful scenes and we loved it all.

We walked, talked, laughed, ate too much, laughed some more and of course did some shopping. It was a beautiful weekend. I encourage anyone who comes to New England, to come in the fall, to visit the beautiful side of the New England heritage, to see the historic sites. New England has so much to offer and we’re really enjoying it

I’ll post more on the fall foliage of our backyard in the next post.