A Cause for Celebration

This post has absolutely nothing to do with teaching and everything to do with my incredible husband and chosen life partner, Joel.  Actually, maybe the one tiny role teaching does play in this post is that Joel is largely the reason why I am sane enough to teach and teach well.  Joel followed me to Victoria eight years ago to help me chase my dream of attending UVic to become a teacher.  He’s made me dinner and fed it to me on numerous occasions so I can keep marking/planning/prepping without interruption.  He’s held me close when I’ve cried endless tears over the students I’ve had the pleasure to work with over the last few years.  He always listens to my teaching stories…the good, the bad and the absolutely crazy.  He doesn’t bat an eye when I spend our own money on teaching supplies for my classroom(s) or food for my students who have nothing.  Joel deserves an award for marrying me, truly.  I am not an easy person to be in a relationship with and the fact that I chose teaching as my lifelong vocation, well, that adds a whole new level of crazy to my life!

Cheers to all you life partners of teachers; you are incredible and strong and probably more needed than you know.  We teachers tend to give all of ourselves to our work and our students and come home at the end of the school day with very little left to share.  Thank you, Babe, for being the pillar of support I’ve constantly needed while navigating my way through this career so far.  I couldn’t have done it without you.

Ten years ago today this cute and awkward nineteen year old boy asked an even more awkward (I won’t say I was cuter) seventeen year old girl to be his girlfriend and the rest is history.  We dated for six years before getting engaged, seven before getting married, and then we decided to get married on our “dating anniversary” because we’d already spent so many years celebrating October 22nd as our anniversary that we couldn’t imagine ditching that date for a new anniversary date.

I’ll do my best to walk you through a decade’s worth of photos of us:

 

2005: Just babies! Note: worst haircut I’ve ever had?

2006: Grouse Grind – the first and last time I’ve ever done it. Joel has a recording of me hiking and swearing off junk food for the rest of my life, hence the reason why we haven’t done the Grind since?

2007: We spent four months in South East Asia. This photo was taken in Koh Chang, one of our favourite places on earth.

2008: The end to our first year in Victoria. I got a harsh case of strep throat approximately 20 minutes after this photo was taken.

2009: Horne Lake Caves. We stayed at the Tree Spheres just outside of Qualicum. For this anniversary we had the same events planned on different weekends. We ended up figuring out that we had planned the same anniversary adventures (who does that!?) and obviously we cancelled one of the weekends.

2010: Engaged! We actually got engaged four days before our anniversary because an anniversary engagement would have been way too obvious.

2011: Married! This photo was snapped moments before we legally tied the knot down on Dallas Road in Victoria.

2012: Starting the annual tradition of the wedding clothes! We got dressed up in our fancy clothes and since it was pouring with rain we posed on our condo’s balcony with the camera’s self timer as our witness.

2013: Year 2 of Marriage, wedding clothes on. This one was a race against the fog up on Rainbow Hill in Victoria. Again, self timer as the witness.

2014: Here we are as tiny specs on a beach in San Francisco in March. Yes, this is the most recent photo of us that I could find. Unfortunately today’s torrential downpour deterred our post-work-wedding-clothes-wearing outdoor photo shoot (that, and it’s dark by 5pm now?!) We might need to cheat a bit and do that photo shoot on a less soggy day.  Yay 10 years!