We had our 12th anniversary a couple of weeks ago, and maybe more importantly, marked the 20th year of being together. Half of my life, that is. Scary. Not the half my life thing, but the fact that twenty years is half of my life, and that it has flown by so quickly. Hard to believe.
After years of trying to outdo each other, we decided to keep it simple. A babysitter, some dinner, a movie… all of that in one night is actually a big deal for us, so I was pretty excited to go. Of course, it’s never as easy as it seems. About five minutes before we were going to leave Sara gets her phone to see if the babysitter is on her way, and notices a few text messages our babysitter wrote in mid-hurl saying she couldn’t make it.
The funny thing is, it wasn’t that big of a deal. At some point in the past few years, while I wasn’t really paying attention, we built a little life here in Berwyn. I made one call, was putting the kids in the car while the pizza delivery guy showed up and tossed the pizza in my trunk, and we dropped the kids off for an impromptu sleepover down the street (ha! love that we have friends that’ll just take the kids!). So, a minor bump in the road fixed, and we were off. First stop was Alba, where we know the chef and his wife so we always get treated well… and as a bonus, the waiter that we knew there who moved to NY was back in town… which made everything perfect. Since our friend who was watching the kids also decided to drive to our house and walk the dogs at 9:00, we hit the theater afterwards without worrying about getting home - which was peaceful and empty when we got there after all was said and done, being kid-less and all. The next morning, our friends came back with our kids and theirs for breakfast, each one of them bearing a bouquet of flowers as they walked in the door. So we looked around the house for enough vases to fit all of the flowers, ate waffles and bacon, and sat around in our pajamas for most of the day. So what started as a simple night out ended up being something spectacular, thanks to a few of the people that happened into our life in the past few years.
… and in case you haven’t been paying attention, we’re moving on at full speed. Lily started kindergarten – and dove right into it like she was born to go – even though some of us (read: Sara) had a tough time with it… Sam started second grade and has already decided it’s easy… and we bought a soon-to-be gigantic dog, who is mild mannered as can be, most likely because he is too tired from growing. In the first three weeks we’ve had him, he’s gained 14 pounds – and for those of you who aren’t mathematically inclined, that’s an average of 3/4 of a pound per day… So we’re off and running, most of the time to uncharted territory, it seems, but at least we have friends to depend on along the way.
