So Very Happily Married

This was taken on Saturday night at our favorite restaurant, the downtown El Gaucho, where we celebrated nearly ten years of marriage come this September. I wore a beautiful new maternity dress that Jason gave me for our weekend sans children, which unfortunately you can't see that well in this picture.

Our weekend was perfection - no cooking or dishes, wonderful food, whale watching, napping, Iron Man 3, the Corpus Christi Mass at the St. James Cathedral and Pike Place Market in the sunshine. We stopped at the downtown EE Robbins where Jason bought my engagement ring and dropped off my white gold rings for rhodium plating and to be soldered together, something that I've wanted to do for several years. They now no longer look like a light shade of yellow gold, but the white gold that they are! They are all pretty and sparkly again!

The most wonderful discovery of the weekend was that we still honestly, genuinely like each other! I can't speak for Jason, but I actually like him (and love him) more than I did when we got married. We had plenty to talk about, learned more about each other and laughed a lot. Jason didn't know that I have a pretty strong fear of heights, which he found out while we rode the new Seattle ferris wheel. And while I am afraid of heights, it's not debilitating. I was freaked out just enough to make it fun scary and I really enjoyed it.

During the past ten years, I have discovered that marriage is even better than I thought. Please note that I said better, not easier :) While I grew up observing my parents' successful, happy marriage, I still think that like so many of my generation, I was affected by our culture's typical attitude about marriage: it's a difficult, monotonous, endless battle of two different people with different perspectives, personalities, needs and desires.

How sad. How terribly sad that so many in our society are missing out on one of life's grandest gifts. I realize that to those who have been married for fifty years, we are but newlyweds. Still, I feel optimistic, hopeful, encouraged and so wonderfully pleased with the way married life has been so far.

So thank you to my darling Jason for an unforgettable weekend and a great start to our life together!