Our 10th Anniversary

I can hardly believe a whole decade has gone by since Ted and I were married. June 28th is our actual anniversary date, though we celebrated a couple of different times. On June 10th we got away for a nice date. I treated Ted to dinner at the Top of the World restaurant, a revolving dinner experience at the top of the Stratosphere tower. The dinner was absolutely fabulous. We got the three-course meal for two and each had a different soup. Mine was some kind of creamy carrot concoction that was wonderful. Our main course included steak, twice-baked potatoes, asparagus, and dinner rolls, and our dessert was the famous chocolate Stratosphere--a white chocolate standing tower with mousse-filled goodness in the top portion. Yummy! Our attendants were interesting. The "main" guy (whatever he's called) had a thick accent (not sure what kind) that made me feel like Steve Martin in the Father of the Bride movie--you know, the part where they're working with the wedding coordinator and the ladies can understand him perfectly, but the dad just sits there thinking, "Huh?!" I had no idea what our server said for the most part. But another attendant had a nametag on that showed he was from Budapest, and we struck up a nice rapport after Ted thanked him in Hungarian when he served us our main course. After that, he kept coming back to check on us and chat a bit...I think we made his day by telling him about our experiences in Hungary!

After our meal we went outside for a look around. It was super windy up there but neat to see. Inside the restaurant we had rotated almost all the way around, watching the sun set over the mountains and picking out familiar landmarks. (Oh, so THAT'S where the famous Little Chapel of Las Vegas is!) Outside we watched the crazy people doing the rides--no WAY would you get me on any of those things! Then we took our 37-second elevator ride back to safe ground (our ears popping all the way) and decided to look for a movie to see since we don't get out much these days. We chose Ocean's Thirteen, a fun flick since we had enjoyed Ocean's Eleven.

On our actual anniversary we were knee-deep in Commission activities (more about that in a later blog post); however, we did arrange for an informal vow-renewal ceremony on Saturday morning, June 30. We were out at the Bruneau Sand Dunes to say goodbye to the students, pose for staff pictures, etc. Chas, the camp pastor and a friend of ours that we've known since about two months after we were married, officiated for us. We had him read Philippians 2:1-11, the passage that our dads read at our wedding ceremony, and he spoke a little bit. I read something I had written in the van on the way to the Sand Dunes (nothing like planning ahead!!), and Ted spoke on the fly--we both played to our strengths. :-) I do wish I had what Ted said written down, because it was so beautiful, but you'll just have to be content with taking my word for it.

It was very cool to have the teens stay to watch. Some of them are from broken homes, and we hope we were an encouragement to them that lasting marriages can happen in this day and age. We're still young enough to be considered somewhat cool, but 10 years is a great milestone to celebrate!

We had a nice cake back at the church after we had finished the clean-up duties and had lunch. Ted was good, and for the second time he refrained from shoving cake up my nose. :-)

So, all in all, it's been a great month of celebration for us! Here's to many more decades to come!