our wedding anniversaries

may 16th 2007, husband was away in london for almost a month. so he wasn't around for our little girl's birthday (which was on the same day as our wedding anniversary) as well as for our 9th wedding anniversary. but i had a surprise coming my way that day. our neighbor friend arrived at my front door with a beautiful bouquet of one of my favorite flowers - pink lilies! turns out that my husband had arranged for a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to me on this day of our anniversary. the bouquet was gorgeous, and it was a beautiful gesture.

so today's may 20th, and we had just celebrated our 10th anniversary (!) and our daughter's 6th birthday just a few days ago. wow, 10 years. sounds like a long time, but felt like it had gone by so quickly. particularly when your years has just been busy, busy, busy.

well, soon we will not be so busy, i think, i hope.

so we got married on may 16th 1998. let me look back on how we had celebrated our past anniversaries. 1st anniversary - vacation/business trip in los angeles, u.s. it was a greta trip and a great time with wonderful memories. we had our anniversary dinner in a nice restaurant by the lake. it was very nice.

2nd anniversary, can't remember. i'm sure there were gifts.

3rd anniversary, can't remember. just gifts and dinner i guess.

4th anniversary was a big do - the birth of our baby daughter. huge coincidence? no. we picked the date for her delivery shopping style. consistently in character with me. because i have had high blood pressure for many years since i was a teenager, my ogbyn just decided that i don't even need to bother with natural childbirth. that it would be too risky. so he just flipped open his planner and pointed out that i would need to deliver within a certain week, and basically asked us to pick a date, any date within that week. and our anniversary date feel within that week. so we thought, hmm, why not. one less date to remember. and we thought it would be nice to have a double celebration. so for our 4th anniversary, i went through surgery and pain and lots of discomfort, but also we celebrated with the arrival of our lovely treasure, baby girl. it was very nice actually, the physical fruit of our love together now a part of us and our lives together as a family. and the love between the 2 of us very quickly grew and spilled over to our baby as well.

however, since then our anniversary celebrations has pretty much been about her birthday, haha. which is ok anyway.

5th anniversary, baby girl's 1st birthday, which was quite a big do. we had a party in mum's house and had lots of people over. and gifts and dinner for us, i'm sure. can't remember actually.

6th anniversary, wasn't much of a do, although it was full of memories as well. we celebrated baby girl's 2nd birthday at macdonald's, and i was pregnant with my baby boy, and we were going through a very bad patch in our church. so it was intense and very, very emotional for us and our entire family.

7th anniversary, a very nice trip to perth with our family of four, now with little baby boy, together with mum and sanjeev. we rented a wonderful, wonderful apartment overlooking the river and beyond that, the city. we had an absolutely beautiful view day and night. and we had lots of beautiful fresh food and bought food in to cook and enjoy together as a family. on our anniversary we had dinner at a nice restaurant. i had a very nice gnocchi pasta dish and we had a very nice mediterranean salad with roasted aubergine, peppers and couscous. it was lovely! and even ayesha had a little birthday celebration in the airplane on our flight back. the flight attendants gave her some gifts and brought a platter of cakes for her to cut and pass around to surrounding passengers. and we sang happy birthday in the plane! it was pretty extraordinary.

8th anniversary, we went for a wonderful musical, saturday night fever, together with david and cat solomon. it was loads of fun.

9th anniversary, hubby was in london, and i got a lovely bouquet of pink lilies. and a few days later i joined him in london for a week. very nice.

and now for our 10th anniversary, we took a trip to melbourne. we had already planned for a nice trip away for our 10th anniversary. our initial plans were to go back to l.a. but the thought of such a long flight had put us off. then it was london but we didn't have enough credit card points to redeem for a flight to london. so we had just enough points for a flight to melbourne, which was great as well. we had a wonderful trip and time to catch up with family and friends there. and it also turned out to be quite a scouting trip and we ended up deciding to move to melbourne for a season. migration is not the plan, but rather a few years of working holiday. we had our anniversary lunch at the debortoli winery. i had a beautiful risotto and we had shared a beautiful tiramisu. it was the best tiramisu we've ever had. it cost a whopping aus$12. and worth every cent. and i had a lovely pot of peppermint tea plucked straight from the garden. no kidding. it looked and smelled great!

we had been making a big deal of our 10th anniversary because we wanted to celebrate the fact that we have lived in our love for each other and for our family together for 10 years. but also the fact that in this day and age, unfortunately to just pass the 10 year mark seems to be a feat and a miracle in itself. in fact about 4 of those years had been quite stormy for us as we had been on a roller coaster of fighting. and on top of that having to cope with having babies. but looking back it was a healthy process of learning to communicate healthily with each other on a plane of mutual undertanding. and we have come a long way and now we are on that plane of mutual understanding and we can communicate a whole lot better. but it took a decision from both of us individually to want to work it out for the sake of keeping our marriage intact and safe.

so our prayer is that may God bless us with many more years together with a healthy and growing marriage relationship.