Ten Years...

July 14, 2001, I became Mrs. Doug Morris. The best day of my life. Hands down. I could do a whole blog series on my wedding preparations and wedding day (don't hold your breath, tho..heehee). It was simply a dream come true to be marrying such a wonderful man and having it be such a perfect day.


July 14th, 2011. Our TEN year anniversary. Man.. how did THAT happen? We were excited to celebrate this special day.. and turned it into an (almost) 3 day affair!

Our anniversary was on Thursday. Doug took the day off (as well as Friday). My mom and her husband graciously offered to watch the kids so we could go to dinner.

We look happy, but a lot older and more tired in this picture than the one above, don't we? :)

Both of us lived in Multnomah Village while we were dating. This was one of our favorite restaurants that we certainly kept frequenting after moving out of the area. We haven't been there in years, so we decided to head back. Yay!

We had an amazing meal and super yummy margaritas (we each had two... they were that good!) It was SO nice to just sit and chat (we haven't really been on a date since Matthew was born) and be together. Love, love, love spending one on one time with my husband!

Matthew did very well while we were out, much to our delight. We are hoping to be able to do more date nights if he keeps this up! Thanks, mom and Doug.. it meant the world to us that you took such good care of them!

THEN.... Friday, we left town. Did you read that?.. WE LEFT TOWN!! Without our children!

Okay.. pick yourself off the floor and keep reading...heehee!

My BFF Jody offered to watch the kids so we could get away for the weekend. While I was ready to get away (really, I was), I wasn't quite ready for the entire weekend. So we decided to go away for two full days, staying over one night.

We decided on a "Wine Enthusiast's" package thru the historic Columbia Gorge Hotel in Hood River. The hotel has reopened this past year and we were excited to go visit and go taste some good wine!

Ready to go!!

Okay.. yes. I did cry when I left. A lot. But I really tried to be strong, especially for the kids. Evelyn was excited to spend time with Jody, but Matthew is still dealing with horrible "I only want to be with mommy" syndrome. Jody is the one I knew he would do the best with overnight. He also had been super cranky. He is getting his back molars so I figured the low fever and crankiness he had Friday morning was that. Jody wasn't worried. So we headed out. It was still hard to leave. Once we got going, tho.. I was really excited!

We arrived in Hood River to find lots of sunshine and just a little wind. It was beautiful. At the hotel we were greeted warmly by Donna at the front dest, who wished us a Happy Anniversary and then told us she had complimentary upgraded our room to a river/waterfall view room. WOW!

Look! We're on the reader board!!

Our quaint and lovely room.. so pretty!

A bottle of wine with commemorative glasses were waiting for us in our room as well!

We got checked in and then headed off to taste some wine! We had 5 wineries with free tastings available to us. The Hood River area is full of wineries that were new to both of us. We hit a tasting room (The Pines... highly recommended!) and then went to Mt. Hood Winery, which was out in the beautiful countryside.

After visiting those places, we were a bit tipsy and super hungry! We spent some time relaxing outside at the winery just talking and enjoying the views and the sunshine. We don't relax much these days.. it was so nice! We decided to change our dinner reservation to a bit earlier time and headed back to the hotel. We would do more tasting Saturday.

We got back to our room to find this:

A bottle of champagne from Doug's boss with a thoughtful note. We were so spoiled!

Our package came with a credit toward dinner at the hotels fancy restaurant, Simon's. I would have taken more pictures, but it just didn't seem right in such a nice place! We had an amazing meal.. I mean AMAZING... sitting looking out over the gorge. Our waiter Todd was nice, funny, and attentive.

After dinner, Todd and Laurel (the hostess) brought this to our table:

So.. when we got married, I really wanted lemon poppy seed cake. It was way more money, so we just got one small tier of it. Just for me. Well.. I never got a piece of it... I still am upset about that..heehee! This little cake was.. you guessed it.. lemon poppy seed! Fitting.. and delicious!

After dinner we spent time just walking around the hotel's beautiful grounds. So lovely, so peaceful!

He LOVES having pictures taken, can you tell? :)

There weren't a lot of people around, so as you can see, a lot of "self pics" were taken!

We had planned on getting up Saturday, go to breakfast, then explore Hood River proper a bit before hitting another winery or two and then heading home. Sadly, Matthew had other plans for us!

His fever kept getting higher while we were gone and he was SO sad every time we called. He was just not feeling well. Jody was managing just fine (she is awesome) but we felt like we needed to get home to our sweet boy! So when he wasn't any better in the morning, we just headed home. Both of them were glad to see us.. and we were glad to see them, too!

Wow.. that was a long post! What a great way to celebrate 10 years with my amazing husband! Here's to many many more great years ahead!