5, 10, 15…

This week marked 15 years since I met Mr Oceanchica (Oceanchico? 🙂 ) 15 years! That’s a couple of years short of half my whole life…

This week also marked our 10 year wedding anniversary. I am pretty darn happy and feel really blessed to be with someone I share everything with and who never makes me feel alone and unwanted or unloved, which – when you have depression – can be often.

We spent the first 5 years of our relationship on different continents and I’m thankful for that as well. It gave us time to learn each other, communicate with each other, and find out just how much we wanted to give this whole crazy thing a go.

So 10 years of being married, that’s kinda a big deal right? But we’ve never really done presents, or even cards, for our anniversary. But 10 years! So I kinda made a big deal of celebrating this year. We booked the weekend in London and I bought him a present, thinking he’d pick me something up in London at best because sometimes he is just too busy to do something.

So the 13th rolls around (yes, we got married on the 13th! I also moved to the UK on the 13th. It’s kinda our thing.) and we get out of bed. I get him to open his present – a nice vodka shot set, which nearly didn’t arrive but finally got sorted out in the end just in time. I also got him a nice bottle of vodka to use with it, because it’s just cruel to get something like that and nothing to drink with it!

Then I open my card. I chuckle at the bits he wrote in it… and then we get to the end where there’s a note about him forgetting a present, “or have I?”

Or have I?! Oh no, what’s he done… I’m thinking to myself. I turn the card over (he’s known for writing messages in odd places!) and it’s full of writing detailing that I’ll be picked up at Norfolk International Airport by my friend and returned safely a week later!

As I’m reading it my face must have been hilarious. I went from confusion to shock back to confusion to what the hell… and then I look up at him and say “This isn’t real right?” because for serious I thought it was a wind up. There’s no way he was sending me to the States for a week to visit my friends. Right? Right. No way.

He’s grinning from ear to ear and I’m still confused. What the hell is going on? He finally explains as he hugs me that yes it’s real but he hasn’t pushed the button on the flights yet because he didn’t want me to freak and say no and he’d have already paid for them. Fair enough. I say yes!! and we go to the office and he books the flights, me still in shock.

Whaaaaaaaaaaat!

I find out over the course of the day that he went all kinds of behind my back and pretty much everyone knew about it but me! He spoke to the bestie in the States to arrange her end of it, my director at work to arrange when I could go, and even our bestie here knew about it! My colleague knew about it as well from my director I found out today!

I’m still shocked and if I think about it too much I  get teary eyed because it’s a bit overwhelming that he pulled it off. He’s surprised me before, but nothing this big! I’m super blessed and now going back to the 757 to visit friends for a week in October!

As much as I say I don’t like the States and I know I’d never move back, I’m excited to go and see everyone!! Facebook posts and comments are just NOT the same and I want ALL THE HUGS. And we’ll be spending some time with our friend’s daughter, who I haven’t seen since she was 2 when I moved and is now a massive Doctor Who fan! I’m gonna bring so much cool English stuff for her! 🙂

Tonight we are off to London for the weekend for our own little celebration and I’ll do a post-London blog post next week about what we do there.

Sometimes so much good happens at once you feel overwhelmed with happiness. I’m absolutely basking in it now and enjoying it. Too often I tell myself it won’t last and the usual ‘if things are going so well now, it will get bad soon’. Well, screw that! I will enjoy this now whileI’m in it. It won’t last forever, I know that, but nothing does – just like my hair colour!

Yeah, that’s purple! But it’s not sticking around for long… 😉