Because it is now officially our anniversary

Four years ago today, I married a man with whom I've shared an amazing adventure. We started out our life together here in this foreign land, and experienced all the challenges and wonders that such a situation brings. Now this phase of our life is coming to an end, and we're moving back to our homeland, buying our first house and making a place we can call our own. I have no doubt that new challenges and wonders await, but as always, we will deal with them using our own special brand of humor.

In honor of this important milestone on our journey together, I'm sharing one of the readings we had in our wedding ceremony. It means more to me now than it did four years ago.

From Wendell Berry’s “The Country of Marriage”:

Sometimes our life reminds me
Of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
And in that opening a house,
An orchard and garden,
Comfortable shades, and flowers,
Red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
Made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
To be made anew day after day, the dark
Richer than the light and more blessed,
Provided we stay brave
Enough to keep on going in.

Happy Anniversary to my dear, wonderful husband!!! May we always have more laughter than tears. And may our home together always be a haven in an uncertain world. I love you.

Just a quick note

Everything is wrapped in cardboard and/or packed in boxes and luckily, our mattress was still unpacked, so we're using that tonight to sleep on, but we have an air mattress and sleeping bags for tomorrow night.

The movers were quick and efficient. Tomorrow they come with the big truck to haul everything away.

We are exhausted. Lance got about 3 hours sleep last night and I didn't get much more than that, but I crashed hard for a couple of hours after the movers left. Then we went to an unfussy dinner at Il Genio's because it was close and we didn't feel like dressing up. We came home and had Nestle Crunch creme pie while we looked over our saved house listings and picked out our top 10. We have that list now sent off to our agent, and we'll be hitting those 10 houses first thing.

Thanks, everyone, for the sweet anniversary wishes. This hasn't been our best anniversary by far, but it's certainly been memorable. As one of the movers was wrapping up our framed invitation, he commented on today being our anniversary and seemed rather amused that we were spending the day by having our worldly possessions disassembled and wrapped up.

But we still have each other, so we're okay. :)