5 Years

D and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary last weekend.  It is hard to believe that it has already been 5 (wonderful) years.  We have had our challenges (3 moves, several job changes, and the usual, and not so usual, family challenges) but in the end, we have each other.  And that is the way it is supposed to be, right?

Now, I hate to brag on D but I think he wins the "Sweetest Husband" award with this present. He took a photo of our wedding cake and sent it to the woman who owns our favorite local bakery. 

Why? So she could create this - a replica of  the top layer of our cake.  It was even vanilla and chocolate swirl cake with raspberry mousse filling.  Yum!  He is just the sweetest man!

Once I was all warm and fuzzy on the inside from the cake, D then upped the ante by getting me fun toys for my camera. I am now the proud owner of a tripod, a monopod, a flexible tripod and, best of all, a remote shutter release. Woohoo! 

 I, on the other hand, haven't finished D's present and it still looks like this. (I promise I will work on it this weekend, sweetie!)

Now, how after all that, guess how we spent our actual anniversary day?  Cleaning up our yard.  Yup, nothing says "I love you!" like dragging at least 50 tarp-loads of leaves to the curb and straining muscles we didn't know we had while raking.  We needed to get the leaves up because the tree people were coming on Monday.

Sadly, we needed to have three trees taken down because they were hollow on the inside. Why? Stupid Carpenter Ants.  They are usually the culprit when trees come down in a high winds around here. So we are doing some preventive cutting.

Take a look at the bases of the three trees.  Looks like we were right to take them down.

 

This is the big oak tree. At one point there were carpenter ants and then it appears that some bees took up residence. Awesome. (yes, that last bit was written in sarcasm font if you couldn't tell.)  This one was closest to the house.

 Here's the big Maple. Did you know that tree stumps were supposed to be U-shaped? We didn't think that was quite right so this one needed to come down too. The positive on taking this tree down is that I now have the perfect spot for some hydrangea bushes. (Yay!!)

 Finally, we have the Choke Cherry. This one was so rotted.  There was actually dirt and grubs in one of the hollowed out limbs. Ick! The tree guys were totally surprised it hadn't come down on it's own. Good thing it didn't, it would a have hit the neighbor's house for sure. 

We will have lots of wood for the fireplace this winter!

Don't forget to stop by tomorrow for the Thanksgiving Treats & Fall Fun link party!