Happy Anniversary to us

9 years later, yikes.  Did being married to me make Jim's hair turn that gray?!  Guess so.

Yup, today is our 9 year wedding anniversary.  We celebrated with dinner out at Red Lobster with Helaina and Josh.  Helaina LOVES eating out at any restaurant and is a pro at ordering her food and asking the servers for anything she may need.  It's always funny eating out with her because she is so excited by food (not a good thing!), enjoys eating and is constantly thinking ahead to the next course, her next bite, drink or dessert!

Picture taken by Helaina while anxiously waiting for her food.  After she had bisquits and some of my salad, she kept asking "Where's my food?  When is it going to get here?"

Another pic of our thoughtful gal while looking out the restaurant window.  I put her hair in a bun (which she is obsessed with lately) and she wore my amethist necklast to match her purple dress, the earrings I wore when Jim and I got married, and the 2 hairclips I had in my hair on our wedding day.  When I brought them downstairs and surprised her with them she literally gasped.  "Can these be mine?"  Why not.  Everything else is.




Helaina is a parmesan cheese freak.  She loves the stuff and puts it on everything from macaroni to soups.  Helaina didn't get a salad with her kid's meal (I was going to share mine with her) so when ours came there were HUGE slices of parm cheese on them.  I picked one up to show her and said "Wow, Helaina.  Look at the size of the parmesan cheese curls in the salad!"  She smiled and grabbed it out of my hand.  I turned to the waitress and told her that Helaina loved parmesan cheese.  While Helaina was begging for cheese out of all our salads, the waitress came back with a small bowl filled with the parmesan cheese curls and some croutons.  She set it down on the table in front of Helaina and she again gasped, smiled, said thank you and dug in, devouring every single cheese curl in the bowl.  She then devoured her chicken fingers and rice pilaf.  All the while she was eating, she was eyeing what Jim and I had.  We both got the Seafood Bake - scallops, shrimp, mussels and a lobster tail served over linquini in a garlicy wine sauce - totally yummy.  At one point I turned to Jim and said "She's going to ask for some of my linguini any minute - just watch."  Seconds later, "Um Mom, can I have some of your macaroni?"  Sigh, it doesn't pay to sit within arm's reach of Helaina while eating, trust me, your food is fair game for her.  Helaina wasn't even finished with her meal when she asked if we could get dessert!   We ordered 2 desserts - one for Helaina and Josh to split (a chocolate chip cookie filled with warm "liquid lava" chocolate and topped with vanilla ice cream) and one for Jim and I to split (what else for my hubby chocoholic - five layer chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream).  We shouldn't have, we were already full, but it's a special occasion so we splurged - at Helaina's urging!  Happy anniversary to my thoughtful, wonderful hubby.  Hope I can keep turning those hairs gray for many more years to come.