Ten Years Wedding Anniversary - Friday Recap 2

Sunday is our ten years wedding anniversary, and 13 years since Hidai and I met. We got married exactly three years (minus one day) after our first date. I know what you're thinking - who gets married on December 22? People who don't think about the future, that's who. We were young, we were stupid, we had a really good reason. You see, we chose that date not because of our overly romantic nature, but because we wanted to spend our honeymoon in London on Christmas (also it needed to be Monday evening because Tuesday brings good luck, and for Jews a day is from sunset to sunset, so Monday evening is actually Tuesday; and also we are not really known for our patience and ability to wait, so we wanted to get married and go on our honeymoon the very next day). We had the most wonderful time here in 2003, but now we are stuck with a wedding anniversary date that in reality means we don't get to really celebrate our anniversary. The kids are always off school, Christmas is around the corner and all the preparations are in full swing, my parents are here and we spend our nights on the air mattress in the middle of the living-room. All contribute to an extremely romantic feel. This year for example, for our big celebration we are having coffee Friday morning before the craziness begins, and are going to the zoo to meet Santa and some reindeers on Sunday. Ron thought it was a very nice way to celebrate. Since my parents are here we can get a night off (no, we don't have a babysitter so no, we don't get nights off normally) and we are rounding up the celebrations with The Hobbit movie. We might even go all out and buy popcorn. If we go totally crazy we might even buy the VIP seats just to feel rich and special. Yes people, we know how to celebrate in style.

Selfie in sunny Gibraltar

I don't usually do the romantic-sappy posts about Hidai, firstly because it will embarrass him, second of all because it will go to his head, and thirdly because every time I sit down and try to write it he does something that annoys me. Just like this morning when he made fun of my using hebrew and English in the same sentence. But seeing how he apologised nicely, and it is Recap Friday I decided to give it a go and try to write a ten-year-anniversary post. I only have one tiny problem - What does one write? because I have no clue. I've seen lots of anniversary posts, and they all made me a bit teary, and they all wrote very nicely and very movingly about the love they share, the moment they met, the wonderful wedding they had. I love reading it all, but writing it? I feel like such a fraud. Next thing you know I would try to write a happy post. What is the world coming to?!

Guess when

But still, ten years of marriage and thirteen in total is a long time. You shouldn't really just brush it off. It does deserve some sort of mention. Even if not of the sappy kind. Hidai and I met on a blind-date organised by mutual friends who were dating at that time. We fell in love on that first date, where I explained to Hidai that my favourite actor is Bruce Willis (the early works), and we both spent half the night organising the table at the cafe where we sat. We haven't been apart since. We moved in together 8 month later and spent a year at my parents before moving to our first ever flat.
We managed to finish 3 university degrees (Hidai one, I two), go through 13 work places (most of them are Hidai's), have two kids and two miscarriages, and move 6 houses in three countries. But those are just the basic numbers of our lives. And numbers don't really tell the story do they? The story is in the details behind the numbers, the story is in the way you travel together. And what a way it has been so far...
Meeting as young as we did means we basically grew up and grew old together. We went through almost everything life can throw at you in these years, and did it together, but Hidai had issues with me writing it all here and as some of it is his stuff I respected his wishes. Looking back I can hardly believe how young we were when we met, how easily (some would say carelessly) we did it all, and how far we've come (some would say not really).

Our one and only official portrait 10 years after we met

At the end of the day after thirteen years together I would say it's going rather well (I would say that just because I am afraid if I say anything more I would jinx it). Before we got married someone told us we shouldn't get married so young, because we will find ourselves one day sitting on the couch at night watching TV and not talking. We did get married young, and watching TV together is still one of our favourite things to do. Though we do it in bed mostly and not on the couch.
And here is the sappy-lovey-dovey part of the post: after thirteen years together, in which we still keep the one rule of no jobs that require travel, Hidai is still my favourite person to talk to and the only one who hears every passing thought I have exactly the moment I have it, he never says "no" to anything I want (and learned never to say "relax"), he still brings me everything because I'm lazy and makes me tea when I'm sick, he still encourage me to go after every dream I have no matter how crazy it is (including trying my luck at the Bake Off), he still tells me he loves me every night. He is still the one person I can spend more than an hour at a time with, and the one who will readily admit I saved him form a life of workaholism and family-issues. We still see everything eye-to-eye, have the same sense of humour and dance in our underwear in the kitchen.

dancing at my parents, about a year after we met

But if I had to say what's the one thing that kept us together all these years and made our marriage work, is that Hidai is my favourite person in the whole wide world to fight with.
He always apologises so nicely.