Towards the end of last week, Holly and I celebrated our ten-year anniversary. I can’t believe that she’s put up with me for this long… Man, I’m lucky.
We had originally planned on going to Niagara Falls with a short trip down to Cooperstown, New York but then my mom moved to Denver. I’m just going to say that it’s really hard to find somebody to watch our kids for a week. Instead of our international trip, we decided to stay close to home and try to relax. (Yes, I know that New York isn’t international but Toronto, Canada is. We had planned on going to the Canadian side of the falls.)
Since we weren’t going to venture far, Holly thought that it would be fun to stay at the Johnson Mill, a bed and breakfast not far from Park City. Our room was the Riverbottoms suite, and sweet it was. (Look at that play on words…) It had a gas fireplace and a deck with an awesome view of the river bottoms and Provo River. From the deck, we were able to see a bald eagle perched in a tree. Allegedly there are a lot of deer that frequent the area right below the deck early in the morning and again in the afternoon but we didn’t see them. Well, we did see some but not while in our room. We went for a walk early Saturday morning and saw four or five deer on the other side of the pond.
Unbeknown to us, we were staying in the same place as some celebrities. Heber City was hosting a cowboy poetry gathering last week and two of the headliners also thought that Johnson Mill was a good place to stay. I believe that Baxter Black and Dave Stamey were the two who were staying there. We got to mingle with the other guests before breakfast on Saturday and I was listening to the stories that they shared with everyone. While I didn’t really know who these gentlemen were, I was fascinated by them and decided that I need to become familiar with their work.
After breakfast, we headed to a place just outside of Oakley where Holly had booked a horseback riding trip. This is something that we’ve tried to do about every other year for our anniversary but because it’s so late in the year, most places that do horseback riding are closed for the season. I was amazed when Holly found a place that was still doing trips and told to to book it immediately. We showed up, signed all of the waivers that say if either of us become a quadriplegic, we can’t sue our cowboy guide or the company that he works for, and saddled up. Holly chose a very mellow male and left me with the female that had some issues.
Holly got on her horse and waited patiently while I got on mine. Once I was on though, my horse decided that she wasn’t going to wait around for anybody else, including our guide, Jim, and started walking around. I had no idea how to control the horse so I just did my best to stay on which I did in spectacular fashion. After a brief lesson on how to control our horses, we were off. We pretty much just walked around the forest but there was a spot on the trail that was rather rocky. It was at this point that my horse slipped, sending a rock rolling down the hill. This caused her to start running. I’m not sure if it was from fear or an attempt to stop from falling down, but she took off. I was able to get her stopped but not before she spooked Holly’s horse and he took off running. I was sitting there on the back of my horse watching as Holly hung onto her horse for dear life. Fortunately, Jim was able to get the horse stopped before Holly got hurt but it stopped so quickly that she almost flew out of her saddle. The rest of our trip was uneventful except for when we saw another bald eagle.
After ten years, a lot has changed. Holly has gotten hotter which I didn’t think was possible. I’ve gotten fatter which everybody knew was possible and likely. I’ve also started sprouting weird hair on my body which I also didn’t think was possible. We’ve gone through a lot from bad jobs to toxic mold poisoning to school to the birth of three awesome children. As I sit here blogging, I can’t think of anybody else that I’d rather have spent the weekend or the last ten years of my life with. Here’s to forever.
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Oh, that’s precious. While reading this entry I got warm fuzzy feelings. Congratulations guys.
The horse story was funny! Well written!
Congratulations to both of you by the way on your 10 years!
Thanks guys! I couldn’t ask for a greater guy to spend forever with. Ten years is just a drop in the bucket.