Number 8.

I have been listening to this song on repeat since it was released last year.

I don't mind if you want to go anywhere

I'll take you there

We can go if you wanna go anywhere

I'll take you there

- Angus & Julia Stone

Our wedding anniversary is this week. Eight years since I married Toff. 

And when we met (three years before that), he said words just like this to me:

I don't mind if you want to go anywhere. 

I'll take you there.

I'll take you there.

11 July 2010 

And he said it again and again and again. On our honeymoon (12 countries, 4 months). 

Horse back riding in Kyrgyzstan!

We can go if you wanna go anywhere. I'll take you there.

And with each of our babies, which was a different sort of adventure, but perhaps the biggest one the two of us have ever been on together. 

Our first baby! Our biggest adventure.

When we met I touched his arm and asked to borrow his calculator.

He asked me on a date that he wasn't even sure was a date until I reached out to hold his hand as we were walking away from the restaurant.
(Star of Siam on Gouger, for anyone in Adelaide.)

My first Aussie Christmas!

He offered to show me around his favourite pieces of South Australia. Dinner on Gouger. A weekend camping in the Flinders Ranges. The orange cliffs at Moana (his mom's golden retrievers running happily down the golden, sun-kissed beach). The old jetty posts at Port Willunga (where we would get married in just three years). Kangaroos and wineries and stars overhead. We would drive past a rainbow and follow random road upon random road until we found the end of it. For me, it was a once in a lifetime chance to learn surfing from an Aussie boy. Salt water, rugged adventure. For him, the once in a lifetime chance to meet & spend time with an American - the media had persuaded him into thinking that all Americans were fat and lazy and ignorant, too.  He had no desire to ever visit the country, or spend time with any Americans at all.

If you want someone to fall in love with America, bring them to San Francisco.
Everyone loves San Francisco.

Then he met me.

"You can't be American," he told me. 

"I'm from Virginia," I smiled back, very clearly not fat or lazy or dumb.

Don't go wasting your time

(Don't be scared of what you don't already know)

It was a short fling. We weren't supposed to fall in love.

 He said it first, "I love you."

"Thank you," I replied.

I was in so much denial that I hardly have any photos of the two of us together!
This one was (luckily) taken at a friends birthday party!

I wasn't falling in love in Australia. I refused. This was a fun adventure. A brief experience I would simply look on with fondness later.

I wasn't falling in love I wasn't falling in love I wasn't falling in love.

Living on the outskirts

Trying just to figure it out

Talking like a deadbeat, I just wanted you to see

Everything that I could see

Walking in the night sky, I'm always on your side

You are really saving me

I don't mind if you want to go anywhere

I'll take you there

I fell in love in Australia.

I tried not to.

(Admittedly, not that hard. He is easy to love, for me. Australia is easy to love, for me.)

I don't mind if you want to go anywhere
I'll take you there

So now, I listen to this song. And I fall in love and in love and in love.

With this boy and this life we have grown (and the little lives we have grown) together.

And the adventures we have been on and all of the adventures left to come.

Happy Anniversary, Toff. 

Eight years!!!! The best choice I ever made.

Wedding photos by Brandy Somers Photography :)