Seven

Last Monday Derek and I celebrated 7 years of marriage!

I love our anniversaries. Some years we plan trips, some years we have fun plane more locally, and others we just celebrate with a simple dinner. We decided we needed to keep a list of all of our anniversary celebrations, so here it is:

1. Gatlinburg
2. Florida to visit our friends (Brent, Karin, Jeff and Stephanie)
3. Dinner at Giuseppe's (here in Lexington)
4. A little celebartion at home, followed up at the end of the month by a trip to Marco Island, Florida
5. Derek's 5 year extravaganza, as detailed here, here and here
6. Grouting the backsplash in our new kitchen and dinner at the Chop House.

Regardless we always take time to celebrate, and we try to watch some of our wedding DVD around the time of our anniversary. (This year we watched it a week early with our friend Amanda who we've known less than a year, so it was fun to get to share our wedding with her. Don't worry, it has a highlight section - we didn't make her sit through hours of wedding footage!)

This past year was a good one! Filled with good things, hard things, fun things and lots of laughs. It really does just keep getting better, which I am very thankful for. I told Derek in the card I wrote for him that I always end my prayers asking God to grow us closer to each other and closer to Him and He has definitely done that this year, and I am thankful for it.

Because our anniversary fell on a Monday, we both had to work all day. But once we got off work, it was gift exchanging, Moose walking and a delicious anniversary dinner at Dudley's.

My favorite part about this year's anniversary was the gifts. The traditional 7 year gifts are wool or copper. I had no idea what to get Derek, but God blessed me with the perfect idea - a blue, wool blazer. We go to lots of weddings, and while Derek has a few suits, he doesn't have a blue blazer that he can just wear with khakis, a shirt and tie. Clarification - he actually has one, but it belonged to the grandfather of one of his friends and was too big for him 30 pounds ago, so now it's really too big. I was so excited to give Derek his gift, but ended up loving his gifts to me even more.

Derek had this whole set up in our guest room. I walked in and there was this awesome coral dress hanging up. It is gorgeous. On the dresser was a little packet of paper and 6 more gifts. Derek got me 7 gifts for 7 years of marriage - love that! The little packet of paper included a letter from Derek as well as a sweet note from each of my Bridesmaids, since there were 7. I was so impressed that Derek was able to coordinate that, especially because none of them even live in Lexington anymore. He was very sneaky and the letters were so sweet, I may have cried.

After pulling myself together, I opened the rest of the gifts, which included earrings and a necklace to go with the dress (the jewelry and dress were from Anthropologie - I'm a lucky girl!) and some running shorts, a dry fit running shirt and another cute top. All of the gifts had either coral or turquoise in them - Derek had a color theme going - and the packet of letters were all on coral, blue and white paper. I told Derek that I love how he is so creative and yet so detail oriented. I think that is a rare combination.

I loved all the gifts, and got to wear my new dress and jewelry to dinner. Here we are before we left for the restaurant:

Our 7th anniversary was awesome and I am truly blessed to be married to Derek. Thanks, D, for making our celebration so memorable!