A whale tissue box! Isn’t it cute?

Funnel & I have always bought each other the traditional anniversary gifts (year one is paper, year two is cotton, year three is leather, etc – you can see the full list here) and Funnel did such a great job with year five – wood!

I wish I had something profound to say about marriage today, on our fifth wedding anniversary, but I don’t.  I just feel really, really thankful to be Funnel’s wife.

A couple months back, I was in the middle of a really difficult month.  I was in bed, crying, sad, not feeling well.  Funnel knew just what I needed in that moment: a fort. He built me the biggest, most magnificent fort I could have ever dreamed of in our spare bedroom.  It involved two beds turned up on their ends, pillows, our mismatched sheets.  For the next couple of weeks, that fort was my little sanctuary.  I would go up there and read, journal & drink tea in the warm, soft light of my fort, built for me by knight in shining armor.  Just thinking of that simple, sweet gesture now brings tears to my eyes.

I am so lucky – Funnel is more than I ever hoped for in a husband.  He’s my greatest Earthly treasure and my very best friend.

Five years down, a lifetime to go.  I love you, sweet husband.

It’s fun to look through the pictures and see how I’ve changed over the years:

2005:

2006:

2007:

2008:

2009:

2010:

2011:

Another one of our photo traditions is taking a picture of ourselves on top of beautiful Rising Park in Lancaster (I love the self-timer feature on cameras!). Here we are through the years.. (and I’m sorry for the PDA… I love kissing that husband of mine!)

2005:

2006:

2007:

2008:

2009:

2011:

I think having photo traditions is a cool way to document the way people and places change over time.  It’s definitely something I want to incorporate one day when we have kids too.  One of my favorite bloggers took a picture of her daughter every month in the same chair,  in the same colored shirt, with the same stuffed animals for the first year of her life, and I love how it turned out - you can check it out here.    Anyone else have any fun photo traditions?

Piada is “Italian Street Food” and seems to have modeled itself after Chipotle.  Their signature item is a Piada – which is basically like a tortilla, and you get to pick all kinds of yummy things to go inside: angel hair pasta, choice of a grill item (chicken, italian sausage, salmon, calamari, etc.), choice of cheese (mozzarella, feta or parmesan) and then all kinds of fresh veggies items like spinach or artichokes.

We tried their Piada Chips, which come with a bowl of Spinach-Artichoke dip:

And we both got a Piada.  Here is mine – it has angel hair pasta, crispy chicken fritte, pomodoro sauce, mozzarella cheese, spinach, fresh tomatoes and artichokes:

After our dinner at Piada, we headed over to Giant Eagle’s Market District.  Someone had suggested that Market District is a fun place to go for a date, and I’ll admit I was a little skeptical (I mean, it is a grocery store) but they were right!  We had fun walking around and looking at all the fancy-schmancy food you can buy (they had frog legs, alligator meat and a whole, coiled-up rattlesnake in their meat department), and half of the store is like a food court with a crepe station, a sushi bar, gelato and a bunch of other things.  In their coffee and tea department, you could scoop and buy your own loose-leaf tea, which makes me really happy and I bought a couple of tubs.  And maybe best of all is their wine department, where you can load a wine-tasting card with however much you would like to spend, and then you put the card in different machines and it will dispense wine for you to try.  That was a lot of fun for us and we got to try some new wines.

I thought it was one of the best dates we’ve gone on in a while!  Anyone have suggestions for some fun and inexpensive things to do for a future date night?

*  *  *

“The truth was, despite my best efforts to appear normal and put together on the outside, I’d always felt more like one of the weird kids.  But at last, miraculously, I’d found the one man on earth who would actually love that about me.  I’d found the one man on earth who would appreciate my spots of imperfection… and who wouldn’t try to polish them all away.”
- – Ree Drummond.

*  *  *

I didn’t take many photos this weekend, except for these of Funnel, Jason (our friend), Michaela (my youngest sister-in-law) and me on the trampoline on Sunday afternoon:

I love this trampoline.  Back in the summer of 2005, when we were dating, Funnel and I used to take blankets and lay on the trampoline at night and watch the stars together. Those early memories of our dating days have a corresponding soundtrack in my mind.  And whenever I hear any of the songs from the mix CDs we made for each other, I get a lump in my throat and I’m not even really sure why.

Valentine’s Week has been great –  because of the weather (it was 62 degrees yesterday.  in OHIO.  in FEBRUARY.) and time spent with my Valentine.

On Valentine’s Day, Funnel had to work 2nd shift, so I made him some Nutella crepes when he got home (reminiscent of the ones we had in Paris), following these directions. Yum!

Then Thursday was our pseudo-Valentine’s Day.  We went for a long walk around our neighborhood in just our hoodies and enjoyed the early tease from spring, and then went out for a late dinner at La Scala, an Italian place in Dublin.  We split an anti-pasto appetizer platter (It had cheese, cold meats, tuna, white-bean hummus, olives, peppers, and eggplant on it) which was a feast in itself, and then I had angel hair florentine and Funnel had a sampling of spaghetti, lasagna, manacotti, meatballs, and sausuage.  For dessert we split a lemoncello gelato.  The food was wonderful, we played “name that tune” to the live piano music (Funnel won), and we had a fun evening laughing and enjoying one another.

(excuse the crappy photos – I was just using our point & shoot).

On the agenda for this weekend:
* Today: Getting my cookbook signed by The Pioneer Woman with my sweet friend Lesley & her baby Harlow
* Sunday: Going away for the night with Funnel!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

I love you not only for what you have made of yourself,
but for what you are making of me.
I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart
and passing over all the foolish, weak things
that you can’t help dimly seeing there,
and for drawing out into the light
all the beautiful belongings
that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.

I love you because you are helping me to make
of the lumber of my life
not a tavern but a temple;
Out of the works of my every day
not a reproach but a song.

I love you because you have done
more than any creed could have done
to make me good
and more than any fate
could have done to make me happy.
You have done it
without a touch,
without a word,
without a sign.
You have done it by being yourself.
Perhaps that is what being a friend means, after all.

- – -  Roy Croft

I’m dedicating this poem of love and gratitude to my beloved Funnel, who had done more for me than he’ll ever know.

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine’s Day.

xo,
jen.

and this:

and this:

It puts me in a good mood and gives me that same feeling I get when I see old couples holding hands.

We stayed two nights at the Arthur Morgan House B&B and had the best time.  We hiked, we laughed, we ate, we reminisced. And I smiled a lot.  It’s hard not to smile when I get to be at my favorite place with my favorite person.

There’s a gazillion more pictures from the weekend right here.

Tomorrow, Funnel & I will be celebrating four years of marriage. I’ve sat at my computer desk a few times this week, trying to write something about what these four years of marriage and six years together have meant to me and what a wonderful friend Funnel has been.  But I’ve been having a hard time collecting my thoughts into anything that does justice to how I really feel.  There is a line in a song by Mineral that goes, “I wish you could put your ear up to my heart and hear how much I love you“.  How I wish.

With the disclaimer that these words fall so short, I will say that I’m incredibly overwhelmed, happy, thankful, blessed.  I wouldn’t trade this little life of ours for anyone’s and it feels so right to be spending it with Funnel.  He is so patient, so loving, so forgiving, so darn handsome, and he has such a tender, gentle heart with me.  He kisses my tear-stained cheeks when I’m having one of those days, shares his french fries with me, tells me I look perfect when I’m feeling gross, loves me when I’m being unlovable, holds me when I’m feeling fragile, makes me laugh when life feels hard.  I don’t know what the years ahead hold for us, but I’m so glad we’re in it together.   I love my Funnel so much.