Happy Anniversary to Us!

Brian and I officially became a couple on February 29, 2008. February 29, as you all know, only comes around every four years. The last time it came around, we decided to ditch town and head to Vegas to celebrate being together for 4 years. Our anniversary that year was a sad/rough time, so we didn't do much to celebrate on our actual wedding anniversary. And since we were in Orlando for our anniversary this year, we decided we should celebrate on the 29th of February again. I think we're just going to make it a thing from here on out. Since the 29th was a Monday this year, I asked my mom if she and my Dad could come down and stay with our kids at our house so Michael could go to school. They kindly agreed. 

At first, we talked about going to Park City. Driving long distances in the car has been tough on me, so we wanted to go somewhere close to home. And by we, I really mean me. As time went on, Park City started to sound to far, so we were going to look into Salt Lake. But since I really wanted to go see a play, and the play I wanted to see was in Orem, we decided to make our big escape to Provo. Yup, we stayed 30 minutes away from our house in Provo's only Bed and Breakfast. 

This turned out to be perfect. After a busy day at church (with Brian speaking and me helping coordinate a primary teacher training), we came home, made an early dinner, packed, bid farewell to our kids, and checked into the B&B around 6 p.m. I was so happy to arrive at our destination so quickly, and since we met, fell in love, and started our family in Provo, it was the perfect place to go to celebrate. Our room was tiny, but historic, and it reminded us of when we stayed at the bed and breakfast in Washington, D.C. when I was pregnant with Rachel. Here's Brian pretending to write something in the guestbook. 

 We were a few blocks down from the newly finished Provo City Center Temple, so we took a nice evening stroll to the temple grounds. It reminded me of all those walks we took together when I first got home from my mission, back before we decided to start dating. We relived the weeks leading up to finally deciding to just date each other, and we set goals to not talk about our kids until such and such O'Clock. (It's amazing how we can't wait to get a break from our kids, but then we just want to talk about our kids the whole time! That's parenthood for you, right?). We both had colds, so we mostly just relaxed in our room, talking. We went to bed early. Our college selves would have been ashamed.

The next morning, we had a fabulous breakfast and then headed out to celebrate our special day--by running the errands we couldn't do with our kids. We made it to the first store, but I was so tired that we decided to go back to the room and watch a movie from Redbox. We lamented that it was a bummer that we both had colds for this get-a-way, but remembered it was sort of poetic since I had a bad cold on our honeymoon and spent a good chunk of that time napping in an attempt to feel better. We also decided that if we had to be sick, at least we didn't have to worry about our kids and could just rest. We set new goals to see how long we could go without talking about our kids. Then, we went to lunch at a Teppanyaki place, and ran the rest of those errands, and then ate at La Jolla Grove in the Riverwoods:

 It was fancy and delicious! Then, we headed to Hale Center Theater to watch Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was so fun! We laughed the whole time. In their production, they had Pharaoh be more of a punk rocker instead of an Elvis guy. He was AWESOME! So we took a picture with him at the end of the show.

All too soon, it was the next day. We had breakfast, slowly packed up, took a picture in front of the B&B

And the Provo Temple (it's there on the right, promise). 

And made our way back home. We stopped at a fireplace store to look at Fireplaces for downstairs, ate lunch, and then headed home to our kiddos. It was short and sweet, and oh so needed. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for taking such good care of our kids so we could temporarily run away.