This picture, sits (largely unnoticed these days) in our kitchen, but it’s from the giddy early days of dating  just over nine years ago, when we were deciding how safe it was if we fell for each other.

We were giddy, but we were cautious, too, but we pretty quickly realized there was no danger because we’d always be there to catch each other. We got married about a year and a half later.

Taking a miracle like happy, healthy love for granted is easy when you live with it day in and day out. We shouldn’t.

Our friend who took this very picture and teased us unmercifully about being giddy and gaggy is in the same predicament herself these days. (You know who you are, and we’re very happy for you. Giddy and gaggy is a good thing.)

I could say we got married in a fever, but that would be a lie because it hasn’t burned out. We did get married twice, though, once in Little Rock, to get the legalities out of the way, and again on a beach on the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica in front of our sisters and their husbands with vows we wrote together.

Brother Paul (my sister’s wonderful husband) read a poem he wrote for us. The sisters cried. We cried. The brothers-in-law even got teary.

Kitty, Norm, Paul and Cathy helped us celebrate our new life together.

In just over a month, Kitty and Norm, Cathy and Paul, and John and I are hitting the beaches together again – Mayan ruins in 2012, baby. We’re not scared, though we are going in January rather than December. You know, just in case.

I’m ever so glad to be traveling, but John, as I’m sure you know, I’m happy just to dance through life with you.

Consider this a little early Christmas cheer from me to you.