Five years of marriage today!

Five fun memories from Jay and my marriage (all numbered one b/c Blogger is weird):

1. Playing two-on-two volleyball on our honeymoon with a couple from Coleman, OK. (They had the same wedding day AND the same honeymoon package in Puerta Vallarta!) Jay and I usually make it a point to NOT play on the same team in sports or games, because we have different competitive spirits, shall we say. We're both competitive, but in sports, Jay thinks I'm not trying hard enough when I do badly, and I think the same of him in games. But in the past five years, we've learned to compete together, I think. This year, we actually played a game of Nertz as partners without getting mad and won a series of volleyball matches as a team.
   

1. My first Thanksgiving with the Maucks in Kansas: Jay shot a deer, but was the last one in the deerwoods, and this was at about oh, noon, when we're CARVING THE TURKEY! So his dad, cousin, and uncle wolfed down some food, drove out to meet him, and processed the deer so that Jay got back to his darling wife after I had been hanging with his family--some of whom I was meeting for the first time--for about six hours. We drove home with a deer head and an ice chest full of meat, along with all our Black Friday purchases of couse. Tight squeeze.

1. Jay and I got our first dog, a full-grown stray yellow lab that we named Beau. He was well-trained in fetch, sit, and come, so we wondered at first why he was a stray. Then he jumped our fence, repeatedly, and we figured it out. One neighbor told us he put him in his six-foot fence while he tried to get a hold of us, only for Beau to jump it. Someone else told us they saw him push the fence latch up with his nose. That dog knew come, but he did not know stay. So we gave him to another couple who loved him, but had to keep him in their house to keep him at home.
   

1. Going fishing with Jay the first few times: He comes to the understanding that I will NOT participate in his usual four-hour fishing excursions unless I get a padded seat and a book. To him, if you can't go for at least four hours, it's not worth going. To me, if I have to sit on a metal seat for four hours with no entertainment besides casting and reeling, I'd rather jump in the lake. Jay gives me the "pity reel," when he gets a fish on, doesn't tell me, and then asks me to hold his rod for a second, watching my delight when I realize I caught a fish.
   

1. And of course, the birth of our first child, Claire! That same year, Jay and Preston bought a restaurant and I began my short stint as a high school teacher, so it was so busy! But Claire was the uniting blessing through it all: she never fails to make us laugh and smile and work together.