Fifteen years ago today I married the man of my dreams. He checked off all the boxes on the proverbial list...
- Kind
- Considerate
- Cute
- Great cook
- Generous
- God fearing
And most importantly, he put up with me.
We laughed a lot. He smelled good. He took care of me. He was everything I had prayed for in a partner.
He still is.
A few months ago I was cleaning out something for probably the millionth time and came across another list... one we had made driving home from a road trip one weekend. I remember the moment, he was driving my Ford Focus (because going anywhere in the jeep was way too windy). My feet were propped up on the dash, shoes on the floor, music on the radio and we started talking about all the things we wanted to accomplish together. So I did what I always do, grabbed a pen and paper and began to make a list.
Nothing was off limits. No dream was too big. No place too far away. We just dreamed unabashedly without question as if we would obviously cross off every single item. Together we dreamed all the big, wild, crazy dreams... we imagined the adventures and we wrote them all down.
As he opened the package a wide smile lit up his face - he knew exactly what he was seeing and I was brought back to that car ride home. We shared some laughs over how grand of an imagination we had and then we noted we had checked off exactly three items: visit all Disney Parks (well, all of them in the US), we've both lost (and gained) 10/20 pounds since then, we go on family vacations and we've taken tons of cross country road trips.
The moment I found these pieces of paper I knew I had to frame them and give them to Ryan for our anniversary, not because of the items we haven't checked off this list... but for the 1000s of others we have. And while we're both a little disappointed that we aren't retired or that Ryan isn't one of the world's 100 richest men... we sure can't complain about all the dreams we have "checked" together. There is no person in the world I would rather have ridiculous dreams with than him... can't wait for 50 more years of checking off boxes we didn't even think to create.
