Do You Remember That Time?

Last Tuesday B and I celebrated 8 years of marriage, and almost 10 years together.  We've basically grown up together at this point.  We survived our 20's together.  Some of it's been painful, like losing his mom, moving how many times now?, and my almost crippling depression last year.  Most of it, though, we like to look at as an adventure.  Moving to different states (although painful at points), having 2 children within the span of 20 months (and now 3 within 4 years), joining the Marines Corps AFTER we were married, the list goes on.  Before we were even married, we started calling ourselves a team, and that is what we are.  A team that, by the infinite grace of God, keeps growing into something we could not have imagined 10 or even 8 years ago.

So, how did we celebrate this momentous occasion?  Glad you asked.  Brian surprised me back in April by telling me that he was taking me to Europe for this anniversary.  Germany, Austria, and The Czech Republic to be exact.  The real adventure part was that we were going to fly Space A.  Space A is a really cool program for service members and their dependents where we can fly on certain military and military chartered aircraft for free.  The catch?  You have to wait for a while, and it's basically like flying standby.  I like to call it "travel roulette."  Very long story short, we waited for over 10 hours at one airport last Tuesday, were given the LAST TWO seats on a plane, got boarding passes, and went through security all jittery and excited, before getting bumped by a guy on orders who showed up as the flight was boarding.  Aiyiyi!  No big deal, we were in Baltimore and knew that not one, but two flights to Germany were flying out of the Air Force Base in Dover in the middle of that night.  We collected our thoughts and bags and made the drive over the Bay Bridge only to find out that they had been filled to capacity with gear and were not accepting any Space A-ers.

As we accepted our fate and drove back over the bridge to Annapolis to begin our "contingency plan" we recounted other such events in our life.

Like the time where we showed up at the hotel we had booked nearly six months in advance on our wedding night to find it "overbooked."  Or the time we drove six hours through the snow and ice without chains on our tires to the pass to Yosemite National Park to find it closed.  (In our defense, the website said that it was open.  Also, being from the south we didn't know about snow chains before this day.)

In the end, we had a wonderful trip that we would have never taken otherwise.  We toured Annapolis and the Naval Academy, we went to the Dogfish Head Brewery (B's own person Disney world), went to some of our favorite places in D.C., and visited some dear friends in Roanoke, Va.  And, by the way, Roanoke is amazing.  It's like a hidden gem of a place that we fell in love with.

The quote that kept going through my mind was from the "Lord of the Rings" triology,

"The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say."