ᴛʜᴇ FIRST ʏᴇᴀʀ

I'm going to talk about more than one topic in this post: our first wedding anniversary and our first year as a married couple.  On the fourth of October we celebrated our first wedding anniversary.  It was funny because as early as the third we were already starting to exchange our greetings because we got married in the Philippines which is twelve hours ahead of Martinique, where we are at now.  Weeks before this special day my husband already had plans, he offered me a romantic dinner date at one of the best restaurants in the island.  He indeed made the reservation and we were so excitedly looking forward to it. 

 

On the other hand, as this important day was coming I was so stuck in an awful situation of not knowing what gift could I possibly give to my husband.  I'm in France and I've just been here for a few months, I don't really speak their language yet and they don't have an accessible public transportation system (I mean here in Martinique) so how could I possibly find something for my husband without him knowing it?  Whenever we go to the mall or department stores we're always together and I didn't want to order something online too, I've always been scared of internet fraud since I worked in a bank's fraud operation's department for many years.  So about four days before our anniversary I finally decided on what to do.  While my husband was at work I took the time to make my own hand-made anniversary card.  I had second thoughts about it because it's way too simple and I want to give him more but I had no other choice at the moment.  I finally knew what to do but then I got not so much art materials...it's not like in the Philippines that you can just go to the sari-sari store (a very small convenient store in the Philippines) next door to buy the basic art materials needed for a greeting card.  Anyhow, I got reminded of my art projects in my elementary years and the power of resourcefulness!  I cut and used a cereal box and I covered it with our stocked white scratch papers to conceal the writings of the box and then folded it to a greeting card.  Then I used a part of the red popcorn box and cut little hearts with it.  My longhand writing skills is not very beautiful but longhand writing is always more romantic so I went online and tried my best to follow the best font that I have found to scribble our names on a huge heart that I draw using my lipstick.  I was so happy seeing the almost finished product and then I draw one huge candle inside and wrote my anniversary message.  The folded greeting card already looked good but I thought it could be better to add more drama by using a ribbon.  I looked around again and found the handle of my paper bag which perfectly fits the purpose, et voilà!  I had to hide my simple little present until THE day will come. 

 

I was planning on giving him my little present at the restaurant but I was too excited I gave it to him in the afternoon.  I still feel it's not enough as a gift for such a husband that I have but he truly appreciated my effort and understood my situation.  One day I'll give him more than greeting cards for sure! 

 

While waiting for the time before our dinner date my amazing husband baked a very delicious pineapple cake, I helped a bit of course but he's the chef!  Then we prepared early for the dinner.  I decided to wear the red dress that he bought ten years before he found me.  It's one of the two dresses that he bought for the woman who will become his wife, the other one is the white dress that I wore for our wedding.  He wore his long sleeve polo shirt which is as red as my dress.  We were so dressed up for the night, it felt so special. 

 

We arrived in the restaurant on time, we ordered two different cocktails.  Mine was a coco punch and his was a piña colada and both were so good!  Just a few minutes after finishing our cocktails the restaurant owner gave us some complimentary appetizers, a green curry of something...we don't really know what it was but it tasted good.  I ordered scallops and my husband ordered a seafood curry.  The scallops were so fucking good, they melt in your mouth, so soft and the tastes was so heavenly good!  I had fish too which was again so good.  Fabrice's plate was very good as well.  We both had a glass of white wine and lastly ordered a dessert which somehow disappointed us, they weren't as good as they were presented.  It was a very good dinner all in all and very romantic but the bill wasn't romantic unfortunately.  Anyway, we kept telling ourselves that "it's worth it, it's a very special occasion and we deserved it". 

More importantly I'd like to share a little about our first year of marriage.  Still the honeymoon stage as they say.  The most challenging part was the time when he had to come back to France without me after the wedding and we had to go through the agony of being apart for some months.  Normally we should have been together around five months after our wedding but due to some delays on the procedure in the french embassy he actually had to come back to see me again after six months and a few weeks of waiting, it's impossible not to see each other so he took an unexpected vacation.  Thankfully, by God's grace we were able to have a very good vacation, complete my papers and buy the tickets for me to be with him on his trip back to France (to Martinique to be exact).  It was by some kind of heavenly miracle that it all happened! 

Our life here in Martinique is different in a very good way.  We still miss each other but not more than the couple of days when he's at work.  We shared some tough moments, my health had not been so great but my husband has been very caring and loving thankfully, his health haven't been so impressive either yet we surpass our problems, there's nothing serious that happened anyway.  We've raised our voices a few times over some silly things, we both have to deal with some little adjustments in living together.  We talked a lot, watched movies and pictures a lot, went to many nice and interesting places, cooked and baked a lot, laughed, hugged and kissed a lot together!  The first year went by pretty fast!  I remember someone tried to talk my husband off the idea of marrying me just a month or weeks before our wedding saying "it's probably too early to get married"!  We prove these kinds of people wrong.  We've never been happier in our lives!  We share the gift of love every second of everyday and yet we still can't seem to get enough of each other.  If our lives will continue to be like this as years go by then most certainly we'll die happy but before the reality of death knock us off we would have enjoyed our lives together.  There's no doubt we were born for each other!