Happy Anniversay!

Today is our 8th anniversary. As cliche as it sounds, I think every anniversary has been happier than the last. I am grateful to have a happy marriage, beautiful children, and a kind, hilarious husband. We kind of have a problem staying up too late because we are just talking about random stuff. Maybe if we didn't like each other so much, we would get more sleep. But I can think of a lot worse problems to have.

On Saturday, Joel arranged for us to go sailing on Lake Hefner. It was beautiful, and a long-awaited event. See, back when we were engaged, we made various unrealistic plans for our wedding day and honeymoon. ("We'll have a couple hours between the sealing and the luncheon, and a couple more between the luncheon and the reception--let's go sailing!" Ha. As if you have any downtime during a DIY wedding.) So the sailing never actually happened on May 1, 2004, or any other day since.

Until now!

Here is our lovely jib sail.

My handsome husband

You can see our guide, our sailor, if you will in the background of this picture:

His name is Bill Rains, and his email is sailorbrains. I'm sure he means Sailor B Rains, but Joel and I called him Sailor Brains behind his back. Haha, we are jerks, but it made us laugh.

At first, it all felt a little underwhelming because there was hardly any breeze, and it felt awkward trying to make conversation with this random man steering the boat. But after a while, we all relaxed a little, the wind picked up, and Sailor Brains kept asking us why we didn't bring any beer or wine on with us. I think that made us friends.

So, I am pretty much awesome at sailing. I didn't want to steer at first, for fear of messing something up really badly, but after a while, Joel convinced me to man the rudder, and it was fun. Here are I am, on the lake side of the fake lighthouse. I've always been on the land side, so it was cool to finally be on the other side for a bit. 

After both of my pregnancies, I got the common "baby blues" for a bit. It's not terrible, and it goes away one its own after a couple of weeks, but it's not really my favorite time, you know? So, after June was born, I read this book, The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud. It's really not that great of a book, for multiple reasons, but there were a lot of descriptions of sailing, and it made me feel like I needed to experience it. In fact, the anticipation of someday sailing helped me feel happier. So it was fun and validating to finally make it happen, and to not even have to travel to New England to do it. (Though I will do that someday, too.)

Anyway, at one point, I had stopped paying attention to our direction for a minute, and the main sail swung out into the other direction. It was an accident, and I felt all embarrassed, but the Sailor Brains said I had actually accomplished something kind of tricky: the wing and wing position of the sails:

So yeah, I'm awesome. 

And have any of you been wondering if Joel attempted to recreate the famous "I'm sailing!" scene from What About Bob?:

Did you really have to ask?

Happy Anniversary, dear. Thanks for 8 happy years and 1 really great sailing voyage (what are they called, anyway...?)