14 years and counting

Axel and I are celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary today. Geez, it's hard to believe it was so long ago.

We have some fun and funnier as well as some hot and hotter (weather-wise) memories of the day. We did it smart, a very tiny celebration - just 10 of us including the priest and our friends' baby but complete with a hand-made wedding dress and vests for all the boys. It was very relaxed .. oops, I might not have done my hair (which you wouldn't know since I was wearing my mom's wedding hat) and well, my fingers might have been green - from putting together impromptu bouquets just minutes before getting dressed. I'd only change one thing if I could and that is to have better pictures .. but maybe not .. maybe the memories are better. I'd love to show you another pic or two but I've yet to find the negatives and scan them. Maybe for our 15th.

In the meantime, we've packed a lot into these fourteen years, plus the two years we dated before that.

We met in Seattle, moved to England, moved back to the US and at the same time rented an apartment in Germany (because that was cheaper than a storage unit in England plus gave us a place to stay when we came to visit his family and for me when he went on tour). Five years ago we made the final leap back to Europe and made Belgium our home.

When I met Axel I was a twenty-something office worker who still hadn't decided what she wanted to do. I've worked as an office manager (several times), in my share of temp jobs, as a nanny, in a fabric store here and there and taught more quilting classes than I can count. Now I'm a stay-at-home business owner with more ideas than I have time to create.

Axel had left his job as a university lecturer to work in tourism for a friend in Seattle, he went back to lecturing for a while when we returned to the UK. He drove buses and has continued to be one of the darned bestest tour driver/guides to hit the road in Europe - just ask his customers. Now he's working for the football (soccer) industry - who would have thought?

We've been through some tough years .. some *really* tough years .. but if I had one bit of advice to any newlyweds out there - I'd tell them that the best comes after the worse.

I take you, for my awful wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health. I will love and honor you all the days of my life, until death do us part.

We have really struggled through it all - through sickness and financial hardships and more ... but the best really does come later, much later - with a lot of work and compromise.

And to celebrate I'm cooking home a yummy dinner for tonight. From our garden tomatos who have also gone from better to worse and right now I'm hoping they'll turn out best .. I'll share more tomorrow in the little grey cookbook.

Saturday celebrate in full style with a stroll through Gent ending with an Indian meal - we're both looking forward to that - cross your fingers that the weather plays ball. Pin It Now!