13 years

On May 1st, David and I celebrated 13 years of marriage. 

This weekend, we went out to dinner to celebrate.

We had so much fun together.

We went out to Babel, a new-ish restaurant here in Kuwait...

It's an impressive looking building...

We had a really nice time chatting. It seems like May started off crazy and hasn't slowed down since. I've got multiple To Do lists, and both Dave and I talked about how we've been having dreams about luggage and missing flights and such.

May is almost always nutty, especially when one of you is a teacher, but this year is particularly insane because I also work at a school, our kids are in school, (so, all four of us are "finishing up" the school year and all that that entails) and, ya know, we're also preparing to leave the continent in less than a month. 

It felt GOOD to sit and talk for nearly three hours, and was very centering for both of us. 

  

...and I geeked out at all the Lebanese cuisine, like almonds-in-ice snacks while we looked over the menu...

Our food was tasty, but nothing so stunning that we'll need to be back, which is good because I doubt the opportunity will present itself ;). 

When we asked for the check, our waiter said "I am not allowed to give you the check until I have cleared your table and brought you the fruit and dates to finish your meal"

Not allowed???

Weird, but hard to argue with.

He then cleared our dishes and came back to the table with one of those comb looking devices used to scrape every single crumb and spec of dust off our table cloth.

Then he brought a sampling of dates and jellies, a boat of fruit, and a dip made of something milky with a drizzle of caramel and cotton candy (yes, really) on top...

Meanwhile, back at our apartment, our kids were having a blast with one of their PE teachers from school as their babysitter...

I'm so grateful to celebrate 13 years of marriage. 

We've seen so many of our friends and family walk through painful divorces.

Marriage is hard.

Ours is obviously not perfect.

It's not even perfect-adjacent. 

Full stop.

I'm thankful that we're ending our expat journey on a high note in our marriage. It has not always been easy for us as a couple to be over here, and we've had some low, low (LOW) points. In this moment though it feels like a great success story, and I'm able to see how (mercifully) many of our hard times have forced us to work more as a team, or forced one of us to rely heavily on the other while we sorted stuff out. I'd like to think we both trust each other more to carry the other - and our family - through hard times than we did two years ago.

Thanks be to God.