In seven years John has never surprised me- until now.

So we've been married now for seven years. SEVEN YEARS! I don't know if that number sounds too low or too high, but it's definitely not right.

We've also been busy. So we really didn't make any formal plans to celebrate our anniversary, or so I thought. I hinted around to John a few days before, offering to plan a little something to do for our anniversary and he hemmed and hawed and huffed and puffed until I just dropped it.

The Saturday before our anniversary we had our ward picnic. So, clad in shorts and a T-shirt, I left the house gearing up for burnt hamburgers and spreckers draft root beer. Hailey tugged on John's shirt incessantly that day and was whispering in his ear, but I didn't notice until, as we were leaving, Hailey could not contain herself any longer and said, "Mom, I don't think we're going to the picnic." "I'm going to be babysat! And they have a dog." (She will never remember that her parents went out on a date that night, just that she got to spend and evening with Nolla the dog.)

John had packed a bag for me with nicer clothes, we dropped off the kids, and instead of going a-picnic-ing we went to the Melting Pot for a fabulous dinner. Our dinner took so long that the next activity, an outdoor concert in the park, was almost over. So we went to Target and bought a croquet set and glow sticks and played in the twilight with the lightning bugs and bats accompanying us.







To save you all from dry-heaving, I'll save the mush for a non-blog medium. But in short, I could not have imagined a better way to spend the last seven years than with John. I feel like I've won the lottery almost every one of the last 2,555 days.