Celebrating Five Years

Jacques and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary yesterday. It started off rather humorously ... I had left him a card in his vehicle so he would find it on his way to work. In it, I had included a P.S. that we had 6:00 dinner reservations later that day at The Mint Bar & Grill. He found the card ... and came back into the house chuckling.
As it turns out, he too had left a card for me that morning. In it was the note ... "let's celebrate at The Mint at 6:30!"
Nice to know we're on the same page... :)

It turned out to be a very enjoyable day - and date. Because this was the last week of school, we had the treat of attending the junior high school talent show during the afternoon. Karstin & buddies Jacob, Chad, and Dillon played a piece under their current band name, "Name Pending." It was very loud - and very well-received by their peers. Lots of high fives & cheering followed their performance ... a great way to end <gulp> Karstin's elementary school career!! By the way, you can view their performance here.
Then later in the evening was our turn to get out and celebrate a little, just the two of us. Doesn't happen very often, so it was very, very nice. We enjoyed a very leisurely (about two hours!) dinner at The Mint, including our new favorite appetizer - batter-fried shrimp with a special house jalapeno sauce - and drinks, tap beer for him, white zin for me.  We pretty much stuck to our favorite entree's too - I had chicken & artichokes (very, very good!) and he had the pork medallions. This was accompanied by fresh-baked bread, so by the time we were done, we were too full for dessert ... at least for the moment.
We had walked down to the restaurant, which is less than a mile from our house, so around 8:30 or so we started back toward home via Main Street. We didn't get far, though, before we were drawn into Lola's, where they were hosting open mic night. We listened at the door for a while and eventually decided to get a bit of ice cream and sit down and listen. It was great ... the musicians were very good, the atmosphere even better, and the break from our usual routine was probably the best. We stayed until they wrapped it up around 9:15 or so, then walked back home to where Karstin was holding down the forte.
I then managed to sneak onto the computer for an hour or so and catch the tail-end of my weekly chat with my friends from DesignerDigitals.com before calling it a day. All-in-all it was a very nice day and a great way to celebrate our first "milestone" anniversary...
Reflecting on our first five years also gave me the urge - finally - to start a scrapbook about "us" as a couple. Since we eloped, I didn't ever really do a wedding album and rarely do a page that doesn't involve the kids, or just me. So, I'm adding a "Story of Us" album to my project list ... Here's the first page I did...

Hopefully you will see pages toward that effort in the next few weeks. I need another project or two, right??? LOL. This should be a fun one, though... I already have a long list of topics I'd like to include.

For now, I'd better continue packing ... we decided at the last minute to head to Bozeman overnight tomorrow for a Rotary gathering where, we found out this week, Jacques will accept a "Club of the Year" award on behalf of his group, of which he has been President for the past year. He is also going to sit on some sort of panel while the kids & I hang out at the motel pool and maybe do a little shopping. I love Bozeman, so I'm looking forward to a fun weekend. Plus, the forecast this weekend includes SNOW, so we're not missing any big outdoor opportunities.
Here's to a great "official" beginning of summer vacation!!! :