5/7/08 Anniversary

Well, it's official. As of this past Saturday, Tony and I have been married five whole years. Count 'em. Five big ones. It doesn't feel like five years, and at the same time, it feels like I've known him forever.

Five years is a major milestone, and since I'm all OCD about anniversary milestones, I wanted it to be perfect. Which means we started planning how to celebrate our special day really early:

2 days ago: "Hey, our anniversary is like, tomorrow! What do you want to do?"
"I dunno. What do you want to do?"
"I dunno".

The problem wasn't so much that we didn't know what to do...the problem was that in classic major milestone anniversary fashion, I wanted everything to be fairytale perfect, and Tony didn't care one way or the other. And here's when you realize that Disney has totally warped your sense of romance, because when you think of the perfect date, here's what you think:

First an elegant dinner at a romantic restaurant, where you are dressed in a stunning princess dress and he's in a suit of armor. Then after dinner you have a lovely moonlit stroll, followed by a moving live performance of some sort, like a play, or a concerto. Then the next day, (because anniversaries are two day events) you wake up to breakfast in bed, followed by a day of just the two of you, side by side, holding hands, strolling through fabulous gardens, planning for the future.

So that's exactly we did. We drove down to Atlanta to have the perfect fairytale anniversary.

First an elegant dinner at a romantic restaurant,
The little Italian place that we were looking for apparently no longer exists, so we changed plans and ate at Olive Garden instead. We sat next to a table with several screaming children, and no candlelight or violins, but it was still romantic because we realized that this was the exact same Olive Garden that we went to right after we got engaged. Roughly 6 years ago, we sat in that same building, talking about what it would be like to be married. Now we were there again, talking about how we'd done so far.

where you are dressed in a stunning princess dress
I was in a very stunning Atlanta Thrashers hockey jersey, which isn't exactly a gown for a princess, until you remember that it's Tony's and he let me wear it so I could cheer for the home team while he wore the rival jersey.

Then after dinner you have a lovely moonlit stroll,
We strolled all the way from the parking garage to Philips arena, and he held my hand the whole way. (Okay, so he was making sure I kept up so that we wouldn't miss the puck drop, but it was still hand holding, and it was very sweet).

followed by a moving live performance
We watched the Atlanta Thrashers play the last game of the regular season against the Tampa Bay Lightning, and with a score of 4 to 1 Atlanta, it was very moving. (And crushing, and high sticking, and amazing goalie saves). I'm not sure most wives would spend their anniversaries at a hockey game, but it was perfect for us.

you wake up to breakfast in bed,
Okay, not in bed, but in the lobby of the hotel. (He would have brought me breakfast in bed but I like to judge the state of the scrambled eggs with my own eyes). Most of the lobby was occupied, and the little boy of the family next to us kept running off and hiding under tables, and the TV in corner was spouting the most recent developments in Iran and the dismal state of the economy, but Tony dug through the tray of bacon to the very bottom because he knows I like the crunchy pieces, and he shared half of his cream cheese with me because I thought mine tasted funny, and when he got up to get more juice, he asked me if I wanted him to bring me anything.

followed by a day of just the two of you,
We went to Six Flags over Georgia, which was crowded but not too crowded since it was a Sunday and a bit overcast. And we did make a day of it. We did the whole park in about 6 and a half hours.

side by side,
Strapped into restraint harnesses, doing 70 mph through three inverted loops and some upside-down twists on roller coasters with names like the Georgia Scorcher and Mindbender.

holding hands,
We did 9 of the 11 roller coasters, so we needed to hold hands to support each other until the dizziness cleared. Apparently our inner ears are not as resilient as they used to be.

strolling through fabulous gardens,
They do have some lovely flower beds at Six Flags. I pointed out all the flowers that I recognized and Tony pretended to be interested because he knows I'm interested.

planning for the future.
He always lets me hold the map. He knows I like to plan which rides we'll do next while we're waiting in line for the first one. Even though I got us lost a couple of times (the map was not to scale) and we ended up at the Monster Plantation instead of the Wile E Coyote Wild Canyon Coaster, he doesn't mind.

So there was our romantic fairytale anniversary weekend. Disney probably wouldn't make a movie about it, but we had fun together, and it's those kinds of little things that let me know that we'll still be together 5 years from now, and 5 years after that, and 5 years after that. And that's what makes a happily ever after.