Anniversary and Couches

 Aaron and I celebrated our sixteenth anniversary. To quote our friends Jack and Natalie (who remember our anniversary every year because their son was born the day after our wedding, during which she was in labor) our marriage can now date and drive. 

We found a restaurant called Doc B's Fresh Kitchen that had all of the things we like/none of the things we don't like:

1) Quiet or no music

2) Waiter checked on us without talking to us

3) Water was cold but didn't have ice

4) No TVs

5) A/C not too cold

6) No waiting around for the check or for the waiter to come back for the credit card

7) Delicious food

The entrees didn't have a choice of sides. They came with very specific sides that paired beautifully with the main dish. Flavors were amazing, especially Aaron's ribs (flown in from Denmark, apparently) and mound of coleslaw. And my cucumber salad...so good! Five stars. It was the perfect restaurant to enjoy together. 

We saw this navy blue Cyber truck. Annie has a dream to own one, so I took a picture. 

We stayed at the Fairmont hotel in Austin. It felt like we were staying in the great and spacious building. It wasn't our favorite vibe, but it was interesting to experience. We had a corner room with windows on two sides that looked out on the city. 

In our limited experience with going somewhere truly fancy, we've been disappointed by the fact that once you're there everything costs more money. At this place, we had to pay for parking. There were water bottles in the room that were $9 each. No free streaming of shows, but you could rent a movie for $20. There's a spa on the premises, but the cheapest service is an extra $35, etc. etc. More money, more money. 

So of course we got room service. I mean, you only have a sixteenth anniversary once. It was sixty bucks! We don't even know why. We thought the food we ordered totaled about $40. I guess there's a delivery fee? Maybe it was a twenty dollar charge for the French accent of the guy who delivered the food. If you're rich enough to stay here on a regular basis, don't worry. You won't be rich for long. Also, every hotel employee we interacted with had an accent. And every time we got in the elevator, there was someone speaking a different language. We were definitely the hicks from Round Rock. 

Aaron's cinnamon roll was HUGE. But it wasn't even that good. Mine are much better:) My banana topped French toast on the other hand was delicious. Oh, and there were two sausages that were really, really yummy. 

After we escaped the great and spacious building, we went...paddle boarding. August in Texas is absolutely killer with the heat. This year especially. If you're going to be outside, you have to be in the water. Even with the water activity, I almost died from thirst. We were not prepared with water bottles. If we'd brought our kids along, there's no way I would have forgotten water bottles. But when we are only planning for ourselves, we apparently turn into inexperienced teenagers who are like, "It's 108 degrees. We'll be fine." 

Aaron wasn't actually planning to get in the river. But I accidentally pushed him in when I was trying to get the perfect shot for our picture. I'm sure he was grateful for my intervention by the end of our paddling journey. I had to get in the water every ten minutes so that I didn't melt. This summer I could really feel menopause approaching. So hot!

 Happy sixteen years to us! 

We also got new couches in August! We have been thinking about and looking for and analyzing and measuring for couches for nearly two years now. It was an endeavor not lightly undertaken. We couldn't find anything we loved in a store near us. So we bought couches online that we have never seen or sat on in person. Risky business! And they were not cheap! It was scary. But I did everything I could think of to research and consider and measure (I measured about 80 times) to make sure these couches would work for us. I decided to love them before they came. They were going to be perfect. 

And they're here in all their seafoam green glory!

We bought two, and they are facing each other. I do love them very, very much. They are truly beautiful pieces of furniture. But it will take a while to integrate them fully into the room as a whole. For instance, our red-stained coffee table was just wrong. So I've got that sanded down and sitting in the garage. And in spite of all of my measuring there were some unexpected things. These couches are pretty low profile, so they don't block the fireplace as much as I worried they would. But if we put them on the carpet and closer to the coffee table (which looks really good and is also practical), then there isn't really enough room for a chair in front of the windows like I thought there would be. Also, they look greener in person than I thought they would. Our living room was dying a slow, beige death, so it's EXCELLENT to have some color. But again, that's something we have to work on to unify the room as a whole. 

It'll be a fun project! But I'm reminding myself that it's okay to go slowly and have some odd looking things in the mean time. The best piece of post-college advice we received was from our friends Becky and Brady. They told us to not be in a hurry to grow up and get all the things. I've thought of that again and again. And I'm glad we took our time finding these couches and saving up for them. And I will keep slowly figuring out the rest of the room. I hope our living room can be a happy place that fits lots of bums comfortably--eight bums on these two couches!  

I've also been thinking about all of the furniture that was given to us from other people and that has filled our home over the years. What a blessing that has been! It's fun to have something you chose, but it's also fun to have a memory of a friend or family member attached to a piece of furniture. In Provo, a member of Aaron's home ward gave us a couch for our first apartment. When we moved into Aunt Kathleen's basement, that couch didn't fit down the stairs, but our college student neighbors just happened to have a couch they were getting rid of that did. Heather and Jason also gave us another little sofa that fit. Those brown couches behind me in the picture were given to use by Joe and Anya when we first moved to Texas. And so was our dining room table which is an amazing piece from the 1920s with four leaves and wooden wheels. Buying something similar in a store today would have been at least $2000. Our coffee table was from a sister in the ward who just gave it away for free. Our car wasn't big enough to fit it, so she very generously put it in her mini van and brought it to our house. We have two end tables upstairs that I bought from our neighbor's garage sale. And a book shelf that a friend gave me in answer to a prayer. We've been richly blessed in the furniture department. So grateful for the generosity of others. And I hope my home is a place of generosity that feels more like being at the base of the tree of life rather than living it up in the great and spacious building:)