Happy Anniversary

9 years ago Leif and I were married in Eureka, SD.  With all our family an friends around us.  It was beautiful.  Magical really.  There wasn’t a nervous bone in my body – every fiber of my being new it was right, good and true.  My face and soul smiled that entire day.  I knew he was my soul mate.   Flower mix ups and funny cakes couldn’t put any type of damper on that day.  All that matter was Leif and I. 

Our pastor surprised us with a beautiful letter that she shared during our wedding service.  Every year on our anniversary (amoung other times throughout the year) I reread it… and come to understand and appreciate it a little more each time.

Here it is:

Marriage

It takes years to marry completely two hearts, even of the most loving and well motivated. A happy wedlock is a long falling in love. Young persons think love belongs only to the brown-haired and crimson-cheecked. So it does for its beginning. But the golden marriage is a part of love which the Bridal day knows nothing of.

A perfect and complete marriage, where wedlock is everything you could ask and the ideal of marriage becomes actual, is not common. Perhaps it is as rare as perfect personal beauty. Men and women are married fractionally, now a small fraction, then a large fraction. Very few are married totally, and then only after some forty or fifty years of gradual approach and experiment.

Such a large and sweet fruit is a complete marriage that it needs a long summer to ripen in, and then a long winter to mellow and season it. But a really, happy marriage of love and respect between a noble man and a wise woman is one of the things so very handsome that if the sun were, as the Greek poets fabled, a God, he might, now and then stop the world and hold it still, in order to feast his eyes on such a wonderful spectacle.

Theodore Parker (1810-60)

US clergyman and reformer

 

Thank you Leif, for working towards this Golden Marriage with me – I’m enjoying every step of this journey with you.

 

 

 

We don’t have alot of digital pictures from that day.  It was ancient times ago you know.  But here’s a little stroll down memory lane of that weekend. 

Reception BBQ at my parent’s house the night before the wedding.

Leif and his buddies from Norway. 

Those Norwegian boys got a little out of hand and law enforcement had to step in.  :-)  But it all worked out in the end.

Wedding day.  Surrounded be so much love from our family and friends.

 

 

 

And look at these stinkin’ cute kiddos!  Their birthday is the day after our wedding.  They were nearly 3 years old here!

 

“I do I do I do”

Aside from marrying this incredible guy, the best part of this wedding weekend was seeing our families come together.   Such a fun and fantastic union all around.  Times to be treasured!