5 Year Celebration - Part III

I left off this little recap with us spending the night in the Presidential Suite at the Marriott. We woke up Friday morning and Derek had a little gift bag for me to open. I opened it and found a fresh new pack of golf balls and a free guest pass to Andover Golf and Country Club. One of the guys in Derek's Bible study hooked us up with a round of golf at Andover and we had a noon tee time. Derek and I have played golf together before and we had lots of fun, but golfing is kind of expensive so it's not something we do very often. I was really excited to get to play at Andover because the course goes through some really nice neighborhoods and the scenery alone would great.

We still had some time to hang out at the hotel in the morning, and Derek got us hooked up with a free breakfast in the concierge lounge, so we headed down to get some breakfast, and walk around the hotel grounds. We checked out the pool, but unfortunately the weather was a little cool to spend the morning there. We spent a few more hours hanging out in our room, laying in the comfy bed, and just lounging around. I took a couple of pictures of the view from our room in the daylight.

While we were hanging out Derek was looking through some of the really old books that were on the bookshelves in our room, and he found a couple of little notes that people who had stayed in the room had left. He got real excited about it and decided that we needed to leave a note before we left.  He asked if I wanted to read it before he left it in the book. It didn't really matter to me, but I figured I would humor him and read the note. It said what you would expect:

Derek and Anne stayed here, May 13, 2011 for our 5 year anniversary...etc...
....Love you Annie, Love Derek
P.S. There is still one surprise left!

So I was glad I read the note and a little intrigued. We checked out of the hotel, picked up some McDonalds for lunch (fancy, right?) and headed to the golf course. I didn't bring my camera on the golf course because I didn't want to carry it around, and it was a little rainy, but we had a great time golfing, and the drive through the course was beautiful.

As for the one last surprise, that was my favorite. As we were driving to the golf course, we were listening to sports talk radio and Derek asked if that was what I wanted to listen to. I'm not a huge fan of sports talk radio, but we were almost to the golf course so I wasn't too concerned. Derek said we could listen to CD instead, and hit play. The final surprise was an 80s rock ballad with Derek singing a song he wrote for me. The first thing you have to know, is that all of the musical talent in Derek's family went to his 2 brothers. Derek doesn't play any instruments and is not the greatest singer. Derek is great with coming up with creative ways to show me he loves me, but I've never had any hopes that he would do anything musical. But he got 3 LCA guys and our friend Ben, who does all our music for young life, all together and they wrote an original song and recorded it using Garage Band. There were 2 guys who played electric guitar, one guy played acoustic guitar, and one played the keyboard and Derek sang. The instrumental part of the song was awesome, those guys are really talented, and the lyrics were hilarious, it was mostly a bunch of jokes we have together, and Derek's singing wasn't all bad, it was mostly funny as he did his best 80s rocker impression. It was really hilarious, and I loved it. And I have no idea how to put it on here, but if I can figure out a way to share it with you all I will.

Overall, it was an awesome anniversary, and I loved every bit of it and all the surprises. Derek, thank you so much for making our anniversary so memorable and for making me feel so special. It was seriously awesome. You're the best!