Eight Years Down, 80 to go.

Dan and I celebrated 8 years of marriage earlier this week. It's funny how fast time goes, and I know that the next 8 (and probably the next 15, for that matter) will also fly by. We went on a date tonight, shooting guns, eating yummy food and even yummier frozen yogurt (we are officially hooked on Sweet Frog, but don't tell the kids we went without them!). It was nice to be out and about. This is the first anniversary in a while that we haven't watched our wedding video (because our DVD player is a dork, and annoying to set up), so instead I'm just going over some memories of the day, funny ones that I sort of expected to forget.

For those of you who don't know, we were married in California with just one friend there, Joan, who lives in Cali. Joan and I stayed together in a hotel the night before (it was a dump, because I was apparently either too broke or too cheap to spring for a decent place) while Dan stayed at the Naval Base in San Diego. Checkout at the hotel was really early, so I was going to have no place to get ready because Dan and I were going to stay at a different hotel the night of the wedding. Neither place wanted to let me use a room, so Joan and I called Dan Alan (I have no idea how we knew how to get in touch with him). He was the director of the San Diego Summer Project when Joan and I met in the summer of 2000, and he was still the director that year. He and some of the other Campus Crusade for Christ staff arranged for us to use their condo to get ready before the wedding. It was so sweet!

Anyway, after using their room, Joan and I headed out, only to get lost on the way to the beach. It was a mess. Dan and I were fighting on the phone as we each drove separately, each trying to figure out where the other was. We were both late, but I was later. Not that it really mattered. The only guest was with me!

Before I arrived, and without my knowledge, Dan and the pastor had asked a bunch of beach-goers to vacate the area so that we could get married! They were all very kind and left, but I would have just let them stay, had they asked me. The beach area (Shell Beach in La Jolla, for those of you who know the area) was at the bottom of a cliff. It was truly beautiful. I had to walk down a really tall staircase to get down to where Dan waited with the pastor. By the end of the ceremony we had a huge audience looking down on us, and they all applauded when Pastor Lauer said we could kiss.

The rest of our wedding trip was lovely (except one unfortunate round of food poisoning, but no honeymoon would be complete without that, would it?), and we can't wait to get our toes back in the San Diego sand some day. For now, we're grateful for God's grace in the 8 years since we made that covenant with each other and with God, and we are content to be right where he has us: in each other's arms.