It's Our 20th Wedding Anniversary!

We celebrated our 20th anniversary our way...

First, we found a dozen white roses, while we were out looking for a FTF (First To Find) geocache. Maybe I'll tell you the complete story about that sometime...

Then, we went to a Brazilian restaurant for Churasco Gaucho-Style barbecue. It was something we had never tried before with lots of different kinds of meat on skewers. Simply awesome...

After that, we drove out to Highway 60 to watch the sun go down. We saw 6 porpoises playing in the water, a bunch of little crabs climbing all over the pine tree in the picture and all kinds of birds. Oh, and a boat just happened to zip by as we took the picture.

The sun finally set, so it was time to go home.

So we took a quick group photo and headed home for some ice cream and a couple of eposiodes of "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century". Nothing like a nice, peaceful evening to say "Thanks For Still Being There".

It's been a great run so far, with humble beginnings to boot.

A Little History:

We met on a Sunday night at a movie theatre of all things, and the main reason I was there was simply because I was cheap (Protocol & Starman - a double-feature at the dollar cinema, how cool is that?). She was there with her family and I was there with my neighbor Scott from our house-turned-apartment-building. I was mainly trying to find things to do to wear out Scott, because I discovered that if I didn't tire out that loony-bird, I would never get any sleep at all as he tended to sing Elvis tunes (quite loudly) all night long.

Anyway, after the movies were over, somehow Luann and I managed to scratch together enough courage to exchange phone numbers and we made sure we didn't lose touch. Our first date was to take a hike up the Superstition Mountain by way of "Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch", which is something of a rustic resort and gateway to the hiking trails. We just hiked up a trail and sat on a boulder which overlooked the valley and talked about life for a while.

Somehow, we just 'clicked' and we found that we worked pretty well together, even though we had an occasional argument over mundane things such as a Rug Doctor carpet cleaner and even stormed off from my car on the Rickenbacker Causeway in Miami once like the North and South facing Zax's in a Dr. Suess story. Somehow, we would always figure out how to settle our differences and adjust so that we didn't hit that speedbump and argue all over again...

We have been around, and have traveled far. We've even been to Europe, for example. Holland to be exact. And we hadn't even thought about going there until we met up with Wicher and Sonja Nieborg on the internet. We had a great time (even after the tumble down the spiral staircase Luann took) and we couldn't have had better people with such open hearts to host us for our visit to Holland.

We even figured out that a true test of companionship is to take a long cross-country drive. We did that several times, including the harrowing drive through a hurricane as we brought home our new car from Hickory, North Carolina. You find out real fast if the person you're traveling with is somebody you can't deal with, or if you both start dividing up the tasks during the journey to ensure everybody will get there in one piece. We have probably driven 100 thousand miles together on big roadtrips. We even drove from Miami, FL to Phoenix, AZ for our wedding, then hauled a trailer back with us. We had to hurry so much (or I would lose my job), that we didn't even have a chance for a proper honeymoon. So, we keep looking for little hidey-holes to spend a couple of days and just relax together. Like Freeport in the Bahamas, or a cruise to the Caribbean, or a weekend in Savannah, Georgia, or even a week in Mebane, North Carolina to sort of make up for 'lost time'.

As we have been together, we have expanded our horizons. From my being a rental yard mechanic to becoming an insurance agent to being an electrical engineer and Luann starting out as a clerk at an animal feed-grain facility, then joining the Army, to eventually working her way into the computer sector as a tech /engineer.

Our interests have also changed, what with being interested in target shooting, stock car racing, drag racing, long distance bicycling, sailboating and now, geocaching. As you might see, each of these hobbys feeds our competitive nature and gives us ways to try for that little bit more in life. I guess you can say we duke it out on the field of competition rather than at home, which is a good plan.

So, here we are. 20 years have gone by (not including the 2 years+ of dating, or perhaps you could say, practicing to be married) and we are no longer anything like we were before. The initial roaring fires of passion have died down to the embers of comfort and warmth. Which is not a bad thing, if you find that you now prefer to snuggle up in front of the fireplace and not get burned. Not a bad thing at all...

Thanks for for still being there, "Mouse".