7 Memories for 7 Years

Coming out of the temple, June 29, 2007

Year 1: I was a first year teacher and Greg was working part time and going to school full time.  We went our separate ways in the mornings but met up at our apartment around 5 or 6.  I'd make dinner (mini pizzas or BLTs mostly) then we head up to campus--Greg would drop me off at the track then I'd meet him on the first floor of the library.  We'd study until 11 then head home exhausted.  To sound very apostle-y, those are fond memories.

We spent the night at the Hotel Monaco, where we stayed the first two nights we were married.

Waiting for the stadium of fire to start July 4, 2008

Year 2: For our second anniversary, we decided to hike Mt. Timpanogos.  While it was late June, there was still snow about half way down the mountain.  I think we may have made it to Emerald Lake before we turned back and discussed how much neither one of likes hiking very much the whole way down.   We haven't been hiking since.

Year 3:  Our evenings changed significantly by this point.  We had Rex and I was now a stay-at-home mom while Greg worked full time and went to school part time.   After dinner each night, Rex, Greg, and I would go to Rex's room to play.  Rex had these super tight green, thermal pants he wore to bed sometimes that Greg called his fancy pants.  Greg often danced Rex around the room singing, in a high falsetto, "I'm a little dancing boy.  Dancing's what I like to do."  Rex thought this was hilarious and the night usually ended in a fit of giggles. 

We spent two nights and three days in Charleston.

At Bridal Veil Falls, May 2010

Year 4: We painted the kitchen.  Our kitchen was a cornucopia of colors--dark red cabinets, yellow walls, and dark beige wanes coating.  I hated it from the day we moved in.  So we finally painted the kitchen--reflective white cabinets and Crayola crayon green walls.  It was awful.   Still is actually.  It took us about a month to paint it because we wanted to do it right--took all the hinges off the cabinets, cleaned them, put them back on, tried to remember which doors went to which cabinets.  Neither one of us liked the final outcome but because we took so long to do it and we didn't want to offend each other, we didn't say anything for about a year, and then we moved so...

We went camping for a night on the back side of Mt. Nebo for our anniversary--June 2011

Year 5:  We moved.  Just after our fourth anniversary, we moved to Charlotte and Greg tried everything he could to make me happy.  He paid the bills (which is usually my chore, and I HATE it), he let me buy whatever I wanted, he helped me paint Rex's room florescent green.   Again, at the risk of being corny and slightly apostle-y (you know how they get when they talk about their early married lives), it was bitter sweet.  I hated Charlotte but I soaked up the effort Greg poured into the relationship.

Year 6: We moved again.  Just before our sixth anniversary we moved again.  Most of that year was marked by moving.  I decided in August that I wanted to move again, so I started looking for houses.  In January, I started packing, and in June we finally moved.  And Greg put up with it all.  Whenever he couldn't find something, he'd quietly go to the box pile I was making and unpack a box or two like it was normal for people to live out of boxes for six months.

Our anniversary was particularity nice that year--we spent a night in Columbia, South Carolina and went to the temple.  We also went to a super fancy restaurant and ate some nasty food--every time we eat somewhere nice now, we will bring up that duck pate and how we should have sent it back.  It was gross.

At Promontory, Utah, July 2013

 Year 7: This has been a good year for us.  We've finally figured out all those weird thing about each other so we are better able to discuss rather than argue (not that we ever fought that often anyway), which is good because this year has been the year of the house.  We've had a series of bad tenets in our Provo house necessitating many hairy conversation about what to do with the house and how best to handle situations.  We've decided to sell it, but that's not really going anywhere.

To celebrate this year, we recalled some good old Provo times and went to Dish It Out Pottery, where we painted some pottery.  We went once while we were dating and then twice more after we were married to Color Me Mine in Provo.  We followed that up with ice cream at a Cold Stone knock off, another Provo favorite.  That was Friday.  Saturday, we continued the fun with dinner (nursing babies make it difficult to leave the house for more than an hour or two) at Cajun Queen.  Again, Greg recalled old times by reminding me how I'll eat anything at Communal (our favorite restaurant, also in Provo) so I should try whatever weird thing he'd ordered.  It was ok.

Taking an anniversary picture--June 29, 2014

 And there you have it.  Seven years of...I won't say bliss because it's a silly word that trivializes marriage and makes anything that's not perfect not good enough.  But I will say, I'm still surprised sometimes that I somehow convinced the Great Greg Baker to marry me--and that he's still married to me because I can be a little...crazy, difficult, stubborn, rude, etc. at times.  But he's still got a few more years to go to beat out Amber as my longest running roommate.