As always, July is flying by with all the celebrations this month. Nick's family is not here this year so that makes it a little more quiet (since he has three summer birthdays in his family) but Lauren was here one weekend so we celebrated her, we've celebrated my birthday and last weekend we celebrated our anniversary; a significant one of 45 years. Since it was such a turning point anniversary, we also took a trip in May to celebrate by taking a seven day Alaska cruise that left out of Seattle so it was super easy to do.
We've always love cruises and now we decided we like cold weather cruises, too. Alaska was so fun; bundling up and being in cold, snowy weather in a vast wildness was very exciting.
We took the White Pass & Yukon Railway at Skagway and it was so snowy up at the top of the pass. The train is a real old-fashioned train that rides on a historic narrow-gauge railroad built in 1898 for the Klondike Gold Rush so we heard lots of gold rush stories. We loved it. And we saw glaciers and icebergs going into the Endicott Arm that is a fjord-like area.
The scenery looked fake because it was all so gorgeous and breathtaking.
And our favorite was Juneau because once again, just like I did last year with my friend when we took the same cruise for our 70th birthdays, we went to the dog sled camp to experience the dog sleds.
Bruce ended up just like me last year, totally enthralled with the dogs and the puppies. And just like me last year, he also wanted to take one home.
The staff on the ship were so entertaining and accommodating in everyway. Who doesn't like getting pampered? They sang "Happy Anniversary" to us and gave us a special anniversary cake for dessert on one evening.
It was a wonderful cruise and we would highly recommend Celebrity cruises. The ship was new and modern with four dinning rooms to choose from to eat every night with lovely common areas and very fun entertainment. It was a great experience for us to celebrate our 45th anniversary, for sure.
So, we have been celebrating for awhile now even though last weekend was our offical date. We celebrated our July 18th anniversary a few miles from where we celebrated our actual wedding day here in West Seattle. I tell people that we've ended up right where we began. We had dinner at a wonderful restaurant named Driftwood to mark the occasion where the first photo above was taken, looking right out on Alki beach.
Here we are in 1980 when we first met.
We have had a few detours in our marriage; living in Iowa and then again in Idaho for Bruce's job but we both knew we ultimately wanted to be right where we are now. When we met in 1980, we were both in a very happy place in our lives and we saw no need to change. Bruce was working his first engineering job out of college at Boeing, he loved living in Seattle with his three roommates who were also Boeing engineers, and they all loved living their bachelor life. I mean, who wouldn't?
Ski trips, rented RV's, house on Lake Washington, boat owners, water skiing whenever they wanted, parties with live bands...or should I say, just lots of parties. But that's how life is at that age. Fun, fun, fun. For me, it was a little different. I was working towards my goal to become a dietitian. It wasn't until I was 22 until I finally figured out what I wanted to do with my life and once I did, it was full force ahead. I was working at a hospital in the diet office with the dietitians and going to school. I really did not have time for a boyfriend. But one of Bruce's roommates met me through his girlfriend who worked with me at the diet office and they were determined to get us together. They thought we'd make the perfect couple. I'd say they had pretty good insight about that!
As Bruce tells it now, he knew he was going to marry me after 2 months.
Somehow I made it through all my studies and became a dietitian and a wife, too. It wasn't something I planned at all. “Change is the only constant in life”. Somehow, I've always remember that quote. Sometimes change is a good thing and sometimes its not but Bruce was a good change. We've had so many changes over 45 years. But we both have similar outlooks on life and our temperaments are similar so that made marriage easier for us. And I admit, Bruce knows how to make life fun for me. How can you ever get mad or annoyed or angry when your husband is such a fun guy? We match up pretty well in that category, too, because we both know how to have fun. Our friends would definitely agree with that. If it wasn't for those two friends in 1980, none of this would have happened. You just can't always plan what life is going to throw at you. We talk about that a lot when we look back at our 45 years. But mostly, we just agree that it was plain luck. We were both just plain lucky people. I'm still friends with that one coworker from the hospital who set us up and Bruce and I still get together often with her and her husband and we are still having fun. Here we are in April enjoying a ball game during the seventh inning stretch.
To sum up surviving a 45 year marriage? My advise about marriage is to keep having fun together and do not let that part of your relationship die. Try to make life's twists and turns a positive experience whether you see it as positive or negative because you can always learn from it. It's hard to do but think of it as a work in progress and keep learning from it. And hope that you have a lot of luck.
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