25 years!

Can you believe it?  We celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary on May 5th! It's hard to believe it's really been that many years. Just seems like we were 25 years old not that long ago, so how can we have been married that many years?

I am so blessed that Matt is my husband, so glad to have his love and encouragement, to have him as my biggest fan and to have him challenge me, too. I am so thankful to be doing life with  him.  Words really aren't enough.

So to celebrate our twenty-fifth, Matt took some days off from work, and we ended up doing a two-part celebration over May 1-6.

The Friday before our anniversary, we spent a night at an airbnb place in Phoenix. It was so peaceful and romantic. We also went downtown for First Friday, to check out the Art Museum and local galleries on Roosevelt Row, and then out for dinner.

The place where we stayed.  It was in a really quiet, older neighborhood in Phoenix.  Really peaceful.  And for a better price than the majority of hotels we were finding. :)

Being silly on the sofa.

Us in the living area the evening we got there.  I'm really sad that I accidentally deleted most of the photos I took but so thankful for these that I posted on Instagram. :)

The whole unit was decorated in a really modern, European style.  This area was in the bedroom.

We picked fresh grapefruits from the tree in the front yard and ate them at breakfast.

After checking out of our airbnb place, we went to Songbird Coffee House in downtown Phoenix and enjoyed coffee on the porch swing at their new location.  It was a lot of fun.  (Notice the photobomber in the background?)

We've had our vacation rental in Marquette listed on airbnb for about four years, but this was our first time using airbnb as guests.  We highly recommend it, wherever you plan to stay.  There's nothing quite like staying in a vacation home versus a hotel, and many times, the rates are very competitive.  In some places, the rates are ridiculously high, but you might be pleasantly surprised, as we were for our nearby getaway.

That Saturday, we all loaded up & went to the airport to get Marissa.  Her first year of college is finished, and she came home for a few weeks before going to work as a wrangler at a Christian camp in lower Michigan.

Rue was SO excited to see Marissa.  It was really hard to get a decent photo.

On Sunday, we stayed home and enjoyed church and hanging out as a family.  Then on Monday, we went camping in San Diego for a couple of nights. It was a fun time at the ocean, though too chilly to swim this early in the season.  Notice the long sleeves...

Just after arriving at Campland on the Bay, a campground on Mission Bay.  Our spot was really just a parking lot, but it's pretty hard to beat camping right in San Diego, only about a 5-6 hour drive from home!

On the morning of our anniversary, we all walked around downtown San Diego and saw this literal hole-in-the-wall Mexican take-out place.  We ordered breakfast burritos and ate them at a nearby park.

Best breakfast burritos ever!  So filling.

This is in the park where we ate our breakfast. The kids played around on some of the stuff in the playground, and in the background you can barely see the pier where guests were getting onto cruise ships.

Downtown San Diego.

Later in the day, we walked along the shore at La Jolla, just to the north of San Diego.  In this photo, you can just see a tiny glimpse of the many sea lions that were on the beach down below.  It may look beautiful, but the stench from all those animals was quite horrible.  It smelled like a gigantic litter box or something like that.  Yuck.

The ocean is so beautiful.  I've seen it before, but it never ceases to amaze me.  Wow.

Blurry pic, but it captures the sentiment just the same.  I didn't mind my husband walking arm in arm with this young lady on our anniversrary!  It was so great having Marissa with us for most of the month. :)

Looks like Marissa was walking Rue, except for the leash going to my hand. :)

Jesse building something on the beach.

That's Joshua over there.

And a twenty-fifth anniversary selfie.  How is it possible that it can be that many years already? 

With Marissa. :)

Waiting for a table at a Mexican restaurant on Cinco de Mayo.  It took over an hour and a half to get one.  Marissa is being silly there and I can't remember what the boys were doing.  Naomi looks shocked,  but she really wasn't. :)

The patio was dog-friendly, so Rue sat under our table while we ate.  It was a little hard once we got home, convincing her that she wasn't allowed at the table!

Hard to see us, but there's the anniversary couple.  This restaurant was in the Gaslight District of San Diego, and there was a huge Cinco de Mayo celebration going on.  Many Mexican restaurants, all with equally long lines to the one we waited in.  It was a fun experience.

Our campsite on our last night at Campland on the Bay.

Just before we drove away.

It was a really fun anniversary vacation, and I loved that it included some just-the-two-of-us time, as well as a family-ish getaway, too.  Now that we have a couple children off on their own, these years seem all the more short, so it's good to enjoy the time we have with them when we can. :)  And it's also nice to have a night away without any kids, so this was really the best of both worlds.