We still think we're 25 years old, so it's hard for us to imagine that it's actually been 18 years since we got married!  And Briant's not sick of me yet?!  I read a quote recently that said, "Marriage:  An endless sleepover with your favorite weirdo."  This made me laugh, and I thought that it was definitely true for Briant!

Here we are at the Portland Rose Garden where Briant proposed to me.

 Los Angeles Temple on December 18, 1999. 

 I remember going to our Oregon wedding reception a week later and another part of our honeymoon to Bend, Oregon to ski, followed by a New Year's get together at my Aunt Delores' house.  Among the celebrating though, was the fear of it becoming the year 2000 because of the Y2K bug, a problem in the coding of computers and their networks that made us fear that they couldn't handle dates beyond Dec. 31, 1999.  The whole world was in a panic, perfectly illustrated on the TIME magazine:

Good times.  Obviously nothing happened and computers went on working fine.  Phew...So, back to celebrating our anniversary and memories.  Briant planned a wonderful evening at a restaurant in the city called Province, Latvian cuisine.  

We loved the charming decor. Simple wood, patterns in fabric, dried flowers and spices.  Very organic and earthy.  Very Latvian.

And of course we enjoyed the presentation of the food, as well as the taste!

We still don't know what this fruit was, but it was good!

We left the restaurant and Briant surprised me by presenting tickets to a Hanukkah concert at the Riga Synagogue!  He knows how I enjoyed working at Temple Rodef Shalom Nursery School in Virginia before we moved here, and how I loved the weekly Shabbat music and singing that we did with the kids.  I was so excited! 

We came to this synagogue back in September with a visitor from the state department, and fell in love with the colors and architecture.

The music was fun, some songs more solemn while others involved clapping and singing along with the cantor.  The cantor was from a synagogue in Venice.  Nice man that spoke English so we were able to understand most of what he said.

I think Briant looks cute in a Yamaka!

After the concert, we enjoyed walking around the quiet city and empty streets for a bit on our way back to the car.

A fun evening to celebrate another year of marriage!  And here's to many more years to come!

Life was a little less crazy for us this year so we remembered to celebrate our anniversary!  We planned a trip to Lubango, with our kids of course, but it was a celebration nevertheless.  It was actually a wonderful opportunity to have the kids with us to celebrate on our roadtrip, eating KFC in Benguela for our 'romantic' dinner, and hear us talk about the last 16 years of marriage and where they fit into it.  Last year, we moved from our temporary housing to our new apartment, and in that craziness, with Christmas a week later, we didn't have a chance to actually celebrate.  We remembered though, and as we unpacked and settled into our apartment, we reminisced over the last 15 years of being married and laughed at how funny it was that we were celebrating our 15th anniversary in Africa.  Not what we had planned when early in our marriage, all Briant could think about was settling down on 20 acres in rural Oregon for the rest of his life.  Life is full of surprises!

This year I made Briant a picture collage like this to give him.  It has a picture from every year of our marriage, along with some pics from our dating and engagement--Bri saving me during a rafting incident on the Provo river, 2 marathons, trip to NYC, trip to Mt. Rushmore, national parks, play productions, etc.  It was so fun for me to search for these pics and then to give the collage to Briant and reminisce over the memories attached to the pics.  We feel very blessed to have each other and are grateful that our fathers were childhood friends!  Here's to many more anniversaries!

Hard to believe, but we're already halfway through our 2 year tour in Angola!  We've survived a year in a 3rd world country!  We celebrated by eating butterscotch rice krispies and hot chocolate.  :)

This milestone has of course prompted some reflection for me.  The past year has been a year of learning for our family.  Learning about another culture and language.  Learning about 3rd world living and how truly blessed we are.  Briant and I have loved our time interaction with the local Angolans at work and church and have appreciated learning from them and the stories of their lives.  And the kids are learning to love and interact with children from all over the world on a daily basis at their international school. These things that we've learned have been wonderful and we feel blessed to be learning so much in and about Angola.  But one of the most important lessons that I think we've learned is that the Lord does truly strengthen us in our weaknesses.  Coming to Angola alone required much strength from the Lord and a lot of faith on our part.  I think when we arrived in Angola, the kids were exercising their faith in us as their parents; that we were doing the right thing by being here and that all would be okay.  They were leaning on us and our faith.  We had many family home evening lessons, scripture studies, and nights tucking them into bed, where we needed to comfort and reassure them in their fears, and give them hope with all of the new changes they were experiencing.  But now, at the end of one year here, I can see the existence of an inner strength that did not use to be there.  I can see that their own faith in Heavenly Father is strengthened and they know they are loved and heard by Him.  They are learning the importance of a person's individual faith and are looking for the Lord's hands in their lives.  Every now and then, one of them will say, "I saw a tender mercy today mom..."  I think it has been reinforced to all of us this year that, "The acceptance of the reality that we are in the Lord's loving hands is only a recognition that we have never really been anywhere else." (Neal A. Maxwell, LDS Apostle)  And so with that knowledge, we look forward to one more year of living and learning, together as a family and individually, here in Angola.
"Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God."  -- Corrie Ten Boom