Our 12th Anniversary Weekend

I decided that I wanted to do something extra special for our anniversary this year.

Two years ago for our 10th anniversary we were originally hoping to go on a get-a-way.

But then I ended up being 9 months pregnant with Ty.

And last year on our 11th anniversary, Sean was out of town.

It was a pretty crapping anniversary actually.

It was a week after my dad's funeral and Sean was gone for a week and a half.

So I really wanted this anniversary to be good.

...

Our anniversary was on a Sunday this year.

So we decided to celebrate it early.

Sean and I decided to spend all day Friday at some local nurseries shopping for our yard.

And then I told Sean that his sister was going to watch our kids 

Friday night so we could go to the temple and out to dinner.

...

Thursday night Sean came home with roses and gave me a homemade card (I love homemade cards).

He was trying to kick off our anniversary weekend thoughtfully.

We were so excited to go to J&J Nursery on Friday.

It's one of the biggest nurseries in the state.

The nursing had the cutest little shop with yard and home decor.

I loved, loved, loved the fairy garden section.

I have wanted a fairy garden for years.

I can't wait to go back to go shopping someday.

Sean and I have joked about getting a moai statue. (We're not really.)

I went to Easter Island and saw them when I studied aboard in Chile in college.

This state was as big as me!

There were so many greenhouses.

Look at all these geraniums!

It started pouring while we were there, so we didn't make it outside.

Which is so sad because the nursery is huge!

So I guess we'll be back again.

We got back home right before our kids got home from school.

Then we headed to Michelle's house to drop off the kids.

I told everyone that they would be doing a "late over" 

so they would be bringing pajamas and bedding.

Here's a picture that Justin took of us right before we left their house.

I drove from Michelle and Justin's house to Salt Lake.

I told Sean that we were going to the Salt Lake Temple.

A few blocks before we got to the temple, I pulled into the Little America hotel parking lot.

Sean thought maybe we were going to park there and ride Trax to the temple.

I parked and told him that we were staying at the hotel that night 

and that Michelle and Justin were keeping our kids.

He was so surprised! 

Our friend David had reserved the hotel room for me 

so that Sean wouldn't see the transaction on our joint account.

Sean really didn't see this coming at all.

I had packed our overnight clothes in our temple bags.

He was so clueless. And I was so happy that I pulled off the surprise.

When we checked in, I mentioned that it was our anniversary and we got a free upgrade!

After we checked in and changed, 

we headed up to the capitol building to walk around

 and see the cherry blossoms since Sean had never done that.

(We didn't go to the temple. We decided that we'd go a different weekend.)

Walking hand in hand, talking without getting interrupted by kids, was awesome.

I love it when we get to spend time together, just the two of us.

Across the street from the capitol is city creek. Like an actual creek.

I just thought City Creek was a mall.

We'll have to go back and check it out.

After the capitol building we went to Harmons and bought dinner to take back to our hotel room.

We also got Macaroons. We had never had them before and they were so good.

After dinner we headed to the pool.

It was on top of the building.

We swam outside and inside.

We also went in the hot tub and sauna.

...

I packed sparkling cider, glasses and candles.

We had a nice relaxing night and went to bed early.

We slept great and woke up when we wanted too not when our kids woke up.

It was awesome!

Here's some pictures I took of the flowers outside the main lobby entrance.

Here's a couple pictures of the lobby.

Look how huge this bouquet is!

The hotel was so beautiful!

After we checked out we headed to Sun River Gardens.

Look at how beautiful these Magnolia trees are.

There were some outside our hotel room.

This nursery also had the cutest little shop with yard and home decor.

I love these flowers.

Look at these beautiful leaves.

There was a fairy garden section.

Originally we wanted to go to this nursery because 

it's one of the few ones that sells David Austin rose in Utah.

But we ended up buying our David Austin roses online.

We did end of buying two little evergreen trees.

We also bought some raspberries and blueberries.

And we bought some hydrangeas.

Then we went out to lunch and went shopping before picking up our kids.

Then that afternoon we planted some of the plants we bought.

Here's a picture of us before church on our actually anniversary.

Sean is wearing the tie he wore in our "bridal" pictures 

and when we left our reception for our honeymoon.

And I'm wearing the pearls I wore on our wedding day.

And I'm wearing the dress I wore when we left our reception for our honeymoon.

We had such a great weekend!