12 years!

Sunday the 22nd, Shawn and I will celebrate 12 years of marriage! I know the Bible says that pride comes before the fall, but I think it's okay to be really really PROUD to be celebrating staying married for 12 years! I have said all along that marriage is not for wimps! It has been a lot of hard work, but it is such a wonderful feeling to know that we have stuck with it, even during the extremely stressful tense times. It definitely makes the good times so much sweeter. This weekend is going to be packed with birthday parties, graduation parties, and youth activities so the only time we could squeeze in a date was this morning. Thank goodness our wonderful friend, Christian sister, and neighbor, all rolled into one was more than happy to come down with her two girls and babysit while we went on our date. I am so thankful for friends that not only are willing to babysit, but act like it's an honor! She rocks!!! Okay, anyway, something I've wanted to do for a very long time, but never have done is go to one of those pottery places and paint a piece of pottery. A few weeks ago we were driving around and happened to pass such a place called The Ceramic Lodge. Then the idea hit me. I wasn't sure which way Shawn would go with the idea, but without hesitation, he said it was a great idea! We looked at the calendar and checked the businesses hours and Friday morning was perfect! We got there around 10:20 this morning, with scrapbook papers as design ideas and got straight to it. It helped that I had been thinking a lot about what we should do all week, because if I had gone unprepared we would have spent an hour thinking and planning and trying to make decisions. We both agreed on a specific design and got straight to work. Can I just say, if you are looking for a great date idea, I think this one rocks....of course you have to enjoy painting. But, we had the whole place to ourselves, our faces were inches apart, and we had to work as a team to create something that hopefully we'll have forever to cherish and remember this anniversary by. It was just a great date! We spent 2 hours painting as quickly as we could and really I could have spent longer there. I told Shawn that this would be a great mommy retreat for me in the future...hint hint. After we finished there, we decided to go to a place we'd never eaten before so we tried Thundercloud Subs. We both liked it, but I like any place that does subs. Shawn liked it more than me go figure. But, it was just a wonderful date to try two new things and spend four hours alone and able to get a complete sentence out without being interrupted. What a wonderful day it was and I'm so thankful to have married someone who is as committed to staying married as I am---and it doesn't hurt that he was excited to go paint pottery with me :)

Tracing the design on tissue...we were too nervous to free hand it...the plate was too expensive to be haphazard with the artwork!

Tracing the design onto the platter
Beginning to paint--notice the colored tiles on the right side. These were our colors and it's hard to tell because pottery paint looks pastel when painted on, but comes out much more vivid after being fired.
Making some progress--Notice the scrapbook paper on the left hand side--this was our inspiration paper thought we didn't follow the same colors.
As far as we can tell, it's going to look great! We are very very excited. We will get the finished piece on Wednesday. In the bottom right corner of the plate, we put our anniversary date so we can always remember that we did this for our 12th anniversary!
Thundercloud Subs---their version of his and hers :)