10 Years

Gene and I celebrated our TENTH anniversary on Thursday. Ten years! Gene likes to say that we made it!

We celebrated all day long with some of our favorite things, interspersed with work and kids' activities, of course! We met for lunch at Cafe Express at the MFAH and toured the John Singer Sargent watercolors exhibit. 

Then Nana came over to babysit so we could go out to dinner. On our way to dinner, we realized we were two blocks from the church where we were married, so we stopped by for a quick photo. 

All Saints Church in the Heights.

For dinner, we chose to try Coltivare, a new Italian restaurant in the Heights. Coltivare is owned by the creators of Revival Market and focuses on fresh, local cuisine. The restaurant even has a "backyard garden" where much of the produce on the menu is grown. We sat on the back patio, overlooking the beautiful garden, and enjoyed a lovely meal and better company.

We finished dinner before 8 o'clock, so we decided to take advantage of the museums' extended Thursday hours and visit the CAMH, the Cullen Sculpture Garden at the MFAH, and the Glassell School's student exhibition. On our way to the Museum District, we drove right past La Colombe d'Or, where we had our wedding reception.

The first ten years of our marriage have been busy, wonderful, exciting, sometimes challenging but also better than I could ever imagined. I know we both look forward to many, many more years together. We are a good team and I can't imagine traveling through this life without my sweet husband.   

Seven Years

Gene and I celebrated seven years of marriage yesterday! My parents were kind enough to come down and babysit the boys so we could go out for drinks at the Queen Vic (Gene's fave) and dinner at Sorrento (my fave). It was a perfect evening. Gene said it was our best anniversary to date and I think he might be right! We enjoyed a lovely evening together with some great conversation and delicious food. My favorite dish at Sorrento is the mushroom risotto. It is finished in this huge wheel of Parmesan, and it is absolutely amazing. Yum!!
Gene made his annual "State of the Marriage" address, and we are both happy to report that the state of our marriage is strong!

And here's a look back on how it all started, with the proposal, almost eight years ago. Gene had tricked me into thinking we were having a recruiting dinner at Mark's, but he ended up proposing on July 25, 2003. The couples at the next table were celebrating a birthday or anniversary and had a camera. Once they realized a proposal was happening nearby, they started snapping photos, so we have pictures of Gene's actual proposal!


And here's one photo from the wedding. Our wedding pics are on old-fashioned film, but this is one my mother-in-law took. Our reception was at La Colombe d'Or. I don't have photos from every anniversary, but we always do dinner out. Year one: Bank. Year two: Sorrento. Years three and four: Chez Nous. Year five: Pesce. Year six: RDG + Bar Annie. Year seven: Sorrento again.

This photo is from our fourth anniversary. Henry was two months old and not happy!And our fifth!Once again, Henry didn't want me to leave! Seven years, three houses, and two little boys later, I am so happy and thankful to have married my best friend and soulmate. We are the perfect team and I am looking forward to many many more years of marriage with my sweetie!

Celebrating

We closed on our old house yesterday afternoon! It was definitely bittersweet. We loved our old home. It was beautiful and we chose everything in it, and it was our first home for our little family, so it was hard to say goodbye. But it makes it a lot easier to know that the new owners love our old house. I don't think we could have sold our house to a nicer couple. They are a young couple who wanted to move to the burbs to start their family. They remind me of us seven years ago when we did the exact same thing. This is part of the email that the new owner sent me after the closing yesterday: "We are at our new home now and love it even more than before. We appreciate all the work you put into making this house a home and we look forward to all the new memories we will create here. It is a special place and we will take great care of it." We are so happy that a new family will fill our old house with love and laughter and much joy! To celebrate only having one mortgage and the end of a very long day (the closing was in Champions, which is about an hour from both the old and new houses, so no where close to anything!), Gene and I took advantage of having free babysitters (thank you so much, Mom and Dad!) and enjoyed an evening out. We started with prosecco at the Queen Vic. And then we had dinner at Haven. Gene has been wanting to take me there for ages and I finally got to go! Haven is my kind of restaurant. It features local, sustainable, organic foods. We started with shrimp corndogs with a Tabasco mash sauce (YUM!) and I enjoyed soft shell crab. And yes, I took pictures! At home we enjoyed more champagne and conversation with my parents and toasted once more to being the proud owners of only one house! Bittersweet? Yes, but in the end, more sweet than bitter.