We watched our wedding video with the kids on our ninth wedding anniversary.
The beginning was a montage of our baby pictures – Lexi thought she was the little girl and Ryan thought he was the little boy. When we explained that those were baby pictures of Mommy and Daddy, Ryan got annoyed that he wasn’t invited to the wedding.
When anyone who looked older than 50 walked down the aisle, Ryan asked if they were dead.
The kids danced together when we did our first dance, making a makeshift dance floor out of a tri-fold piece of foam board.
Ryan shouted excitedly when he saw “Sammy’s Mom!” and “Alex’s Mom!” and the rest of the girls who actually were human beings before they were “Someone’s Mom.”
Cory and I smiled and reminisced at the warm, loving memories and marveled at how amazing it was to watch with our beautiful children.
Then they wanted to dance again, so we replayed our Wedding Song… and this time we realized how simple our lives were back then. Why we were so sane. And thin. With hair. A life. And patience. And why we were able to dance in peace – we had no idea what (well, who) was coming less than 4 years from that day….
But as our children bickered in front of us – Ryan trying to figure out how to make Lexi happy by fixing the bent dance floor – we laughed and knew that although our former life seemed eons away, we wouldn’t trade this noisy, chaotic existence for anything in the world. And if we did it again, we would even invite Ryan. You too, Lex.
