two years

Last Thursday, Stephen and I celebrated our two year wedding anniversary. Two years! ...Has it only been two years? I feel as though I have known and loved this man my whole life... Our adventures started the day we got married and have yet to cease. We have been through so much together and still have so much to look forward to. Marrying this man was the {first} best day of my life and he has been there to share in all the other ones since, and I wouldn't have it any other way. 

Stephen got home around 4 and my cousin Gail arrived just after to babysit for us. We biked to the Boise co-op to fill up our backpack with dinner, dessert and wine, and biked through downtown to the river. We had ourselves a quiet and romantic picnic dinner, riverside on the most beautiful evening. We talked, talked, talked about the last two years and shared many smiles and laughs. We continued our bike ride over the river and through campus before heading home to our sleeping baby boy. 

For our wedding, our friends John and Steff Winder made us a beautiful wood wine box with a bottle of Oregon made wine. The gift is a continuing one. After our wedding we put our vows into the box along with a letter to the other - a love letter. Each year on our anniversary we'll open the box, drink the wine, reminisce over our vows, share our letters, put a new one in the box to be read the following year and a new bottle of wine representative to where we celebrated our love that year. It was a beautiful and thoughtful gift... Last year, though, our wine box was in a box on a barge on its way to Seattle while we were celebrating our anniversary in Alabama. Instead of breaking it out when we got to Seattle, we decided to hold out until this anniversary... It was the perfect addition to our evening - rereading our vows and reading of our feelings for each other two years ago - feelings that have only grown since.

"Allison Karly Ryan,
You are beautiful! Before I make my vows to you, I want to thank you. Thank you for your commitment to our relationship. I have never had a doubt in your dedication to us. Thank you for letting me be a part of your family; I like them a lot. Thank you for being willing to go on this adventure of life with me. We aren't settling down, we won't have a house for a long time, but wherever we are together, that is home; you are my home. Thank you for wanting to be the mother to 4, 5 or 6 of our children. I know I make fun of you for having a piggy back that says 'baby money', but it makes me so happy to know our children will have the best mother to tuck them in at night. Thank you for letting me be a part of your honest pursuit of God. It's been amazing to see you grow in Him. Having faith in uncertainty, questioning and learning. My own faith has grown so much through you. Most of all, though, thank you for loving me. That is what drew me to you. That is how I knew you were my one. And in love is where I make my vow to you. I don't know if you have ever looked at the 'to-do' list on my phone, but there are two things that never get removed - to pray, and to love my wife. I know they sound like simple things, but it's amazing how easily they are forgotten in a stressful moment. So with God's help, I vow to love you every day, to give myself to you as it says in Ephesians 5:25 - 'In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies'. This isn't just one vow that will fade into memory, but loving you is the top of my to-do list every day, above school, above myself and anybody else. Because you are my one, my only, my wife, forever and a day with all my heart, I love you, Allison."

"Stephen,
I have watching you accomplish so much, and will continue to watch you excel at even more. You are going to become a doctor, and an amazing one at that. You are going to change lives and save lives. But know this...you started with mine. You saved my life. In an "Eskimo" shirt and skinny jeans, with gorgeous blue eyes, a killer smile and huge, loving heart... There you were. You, and this day, are what I have been waiting for, Stephen. You have been mine long before I knew who you were. I have loved you my whole life. How lucky and blessed I am is a fact I can't seem to get over. Never, have I met a man as loving, honorable, thoughtful, sincere, incredibly handsome and remarkable as you...my husband. And as your wife, by your side, this day and every day, I vow to... Madly and deeply and unconditionally love you to the end. To pray for you. To learn how to cook something other than 'crock pot chicken'. I vow to cherish you and value you. To be your number one face and your very best teammate. I vow to choose textbooks over sleep and study sessions over dinner dates. To support you. To encourage and inspire you, always. To honor and admire you. I vow to treasure in my heart all the wonderful things that make you, you. You, Stephen, are my seagull, my Eskimo, my giraffe. You are my one and only, my other half, my very best friend, my happily ever after. For forever and a day, with all my heart... I will love you."