Twenty years

"Happy 20th Anniversary Ellie" the words woke me, over the sound of ocean waves this morning. I opened my eyes and saw our tenth baby snuggled between us, and snoring happily.

Our oldest carrying our youngest

 We are at the beach, Fred's anniversary present to me. We took along our ten kids and Fred's parents as well. They were down to celebrate Michael first communion, and we threw in the start of summer/anniversary party for kicks.
Lots of people thought we should go away alone somewhere. We both liked the idea of seeing what twenty years has done to our lives and the world around us. Twenty years ago, we didn't know the ten most important people in our lives.

We never anticipated the impact would be so great. We only set out to be faithful to God in our love for one another, and honestly- we failed at it so many times. Yet, God has blessed us. He has trusted us with these lives even when we were untrustworthy. He saw us through hardships, and poverty, and sickness, and plain old boredom as well. He was faithful to us even when we were less than deserving.

It was a terrific day for us. We started with mass, and then wasted lots of time sitting on the ocean watching the kids versus the waves. For about 30 minutes a pair of dolphins played at the shore and we sat in awe as they poked through the surface for a breath of air every minute or so. I even felt my mom close by as I 'found' about 100.00 tucked into a pocket of a case I used last for her- I couldn't help but think she wanted to be  a part of our day, so we bought a few  lobsters and crabs for dinner and enjoyed every minute of it. I should admit to the few Gollum like moments I experienced once the first bite of melted butter and lobster meat met my mouth- it was really heavenly and I was tempted to keep every bite for myself"preccciooouussss!"but thankfully there was enough Hobbit left in me to resist it from entirely taking me over.

I don't know if you were with us twenty years ago today when we said 'I do'- but you've become part of our story somewhere along the line, and for that  we send you a heap of thanks for helping us along the way.Maybe you could whisper a little prayer for us tonight and ask God to make the next twenty years as wonderful as these first twenty.