Kelsey, as we celebrate our 10th anniversary, I’m amazed at the journey we’ve shared since we said ‘I Do.’ The depth of my love for you has only grown, and I’m humbled that you chose to spend your life with me.
I thought it was a good time to reflect on our lives together and pick 10(ish) of my favorite memories to reminisce about.
Losing our rings
I will never forget the second morning of our married life. We had just arrived in Iceland for our honeymoon when you lost your ring. It happened when we stopped for a hike on our way to Vik. Your ring slipped off in the parking lot while taking off your gloves. The fact that we could laugh about it (and that we found the ring) were all good omens for our life together. It also helped provide cover when I lost my ring(s) in the subsequent years of our marriage (and have only sometimes successfully recovered it). This memory still makes me smile every time we land at Keflavík for Iceland Airwaves.
Moving to Dallas
After exploring the world while dating, I enjoy recalling about making our first home together in Dallas. Following a wedding celebration in Iceland and travels, literally, around the world during our dating life, we spent our first anniversary in Granbury at the Revolver Brewery and Fossil Rim Wildlife Center.
We had countless nights enjoying live music at the Granada and Kessler, eating BBQ at Lockhart and Intrinsic, and afternoons at the dog park, followed by a stop at Katy Trail; each memory holds a special place in my heart. I smile at the memory of our bathroom renovation, realizing it became more of a solo project than I initially planned. The excitement of surprising you with a shuffleboard table after a business trip still makes me smile. Your kindness in signing us up to volunteer with the International Rescue Committee was a testament to your compassion and the impact we can make together in our community. These simple yet profound moments remind me of our love and connection.
Adopting Windsor & Lily
After convincing you to come to Dallas, I flew to Delaware to help you with the move. We arrived on Sunday, and I had to go to work the next day while you still had a week until your new job started. Your furniture wasn’t arriving for a few more days, and you were bored. I distinctly remember agreeing that we would adopt a dog and begin looking when we could go together the following weekend. You remembered that we had decided to get a dog.
I got a call from you in the afternoon saying that you had driven all the way to Fort Worth to adopt a yellow lab puppy named Trigger, or some other gun-related name, from a vet tech you found online because none of the shelters would let you adopt without a local drivers license. I stopped on the way home that evening to get a dog bed, food, treats, and toys. Trigger soon built up his strength and got a new name, Windsor.
Windsor was adorable in his tuxedo at our wedding reception in Katy 12 months later. Shortly after that reception, we made another Texas road trip to San Antonio to get Lily.
Her adoption took a bit longer; discussing what kind of little sibling we wanted for Windsor, being interviewed (and approved) by the Great Pyrs Rescue, and realizing that the dog we initially were thinking about in the DFW area was actually in Northern Oklahoma and almost 70lbs at less than 3 months, and deciding to extend our search until we found Lily outside of San Antonio. We road-tripped the following weekend to meet Lily, and she was the cutest little white 5-month-old furball. She was ecstatic to meet Windsor and chased him around the foster family’s backyard until the four of us left together.
I also can’t fail to mention our third baby, Monty, and that, before meeting you, I never thought that getting married would involve adopting a pet snake.
Picking our Stars’ Seats
When I first tried to convince you to move to Dallas, I offered to get Stars season tickets without realizing the level of disdain Minnesota still feels toward them to this day. However, you agreed to move to Dallas despite the Stars, and they subsequently won you over with the local hockey community and the many sheets of ice they had built in the area.
A while later, you took me up on the season tickets, and I remember visiting the arena to view the available seats. Our time slot fell midday on a Saturday when your parents were visiting from Minnesota, so we left them to wander downtown for an hour while we picked season seats for the sworn enemy.
Since then, the Stars have fully grown into our team, which we began cheering for together. We still have those season tickets despite living in Switzerland. Here is to the mornings you wake me up at 3 a.m. to watch a game, flying back on a moment’s notice to catch a Conference Final Game, and experiencing the Winter Classic with friends and family. I still plan on returning for a Cup Finals game one of these days!
Your First Open Water Dive
I could easily list ten memories of being in the water with you, but instead, I’ll say how thrilled I was when you so readily learned to dive and became my buddy.
I will always remember your first open-water dive. You agreed to try diving while we were on holiday in Oman, but you said you did not want to see any sharks after your cage-diving experience with the great whites in South Africa. Of course, a seven-foot nurse shark was hanging out under the boat when we jumped in. You spent the dive with the instructor while I dove with the rest of the group, but all I could think about was fearing that I’d never get you back in the water. In contrast, as soon as we got back on the boat, all you could talk about was how “cute” the shark was, and my concerns immediately vanished.
Beyond that, I have memories of diving with mantas in Komodo, dolphins, and turtles in Curaçao, gorgeous rainbows of soft corals in Fiji, hammerheads in Egypt, and so many more.
Turtles
I remember your sheer joy in releasing the newly hatched hawksbill turtles from Lankayan Island. Your laughter of joy and cheering for their successful life as they swam out to sea still rings true when I watch the video of that moment.
Our first (, sixth, or seventh?) Valentines Day together
It had become a joke that we would never spend Valentine’s Day together, as travel always took us in different directions, and we were never together on February 14th. Sometimes, one or both of us would spend it with other friends, and we would send cards for them to deliver over dinner.
Then the stars aligned, and we finally were able to have dinner together on February 14th, 2020, in Paris, of all places. It was a typical rainy winter evening in Paris, but we had a wonderful weekend exploring a magnificent Da Vinci exhibit at the Louvre, eating at one of our favorite restaurants, Le Coupe Chou, and walking through one of the world’s most romantic cities.
Little did we know that would be the last trip to Europe for both of us until we moved to Switzerland a little more than a year later.
Lockdown together in St Charles
Immediately before Covid, we were both traveling extensively for work, and we had fallen into a routine where we typically saw each other for a week at home and a weekend in some other random city, typically in Europe, each month. Then everything changed in a few weeks, and we were suddenly in the house together 24/7. Some of our friends were worried, or at least curious, about how we would do. However, fortunately, we had plenty of space for separate home offices, a gym, and a large yard, and we were both enjoying the prospect of more time together.
We relandscaped the yard, some parts, multiple times. I remember getting calls from you that you had bought too much at the nursery and needed me to bring a second car. The one time you bought too much periwinkle to fit in both vehicles, one of us had to stay with it in the parking lot while the other did delivery runs home.
We made a point of getting dressed up for regular date nights together, solving escape rooms and serial mystery games, cooking dinner together, or assembling gourmet meals courtesy of the Wine Exchange and Tarragon Catering.
We also reconnected with friends over virtual happy hours, got up at 6 a.m. for Belfast Whiskey Week tastings, and entertained the neighborhood with spray sidewalk chalk artwork covering our driveway.
Of course, we spent lots of time with our puppies and learning to give Monty his shots.
Despite the tragedy outside of our bubble, it was a fantastic time for us to focus on each other and our relationship.
Roof Repair
Irwin has been such a regular respite for us throughout our relationship that I must include it in this list. There are many memories, but the one that epitomizes us in Irwin is when we spontaneously drove out on short notice to beat the snow and fix the roof.
Our neighbors had informed us that a tree had hit our roof. Fortunately, it had bounced off the eave, so the damage was far less severe than it would have been if it had fallen a foot or two further to the west. Nonetheless, it likely would not have made it through the winter unscathed.
It was November, and normally the road would be snowed in by then, but winter was running late, and it was still open, though a storm was in the forecast. We adjusted our schedules, packed the dogs, our climbing gear, and luggage to work remotely, and planned to spend the next five weeks there. On your mother’s recommendation, we also ordered rolls of late-night infomercial special Flex Seal.
We beat the storm by less than twenty-four hours, just enough time to unload the Jeep at the cabin and get the snowmobiles out.
Over the next few weeks, we worked, scampered around the roof, and enjoyed everything we love about Irwin: Lily diving into snow piles, Windsor running through the meadows, snowshoeing, the isolation, the mountain air, and the gorgeous sunsets over Ruby.
A New Chapter in Switzerland
I remember one afternoon in St. Charles when you walked into my office and asked if I would be interested in moving to Switzerland. It was in the middle of the Covid lockdown, neither of us had been on a plane in months, and the logistics of moving during a pandemic were unfathomable, but there was no hesitation when I responded in the affirmative.
You completed the interview process virtually and only met people on your team in person several weeks after we moved to Switzerland. There were points that we questioned leaving our four-bedroom home with a wooded backyard and moving to a temporary two-bedroom apartment in the city while working remotely. However, the lockdown was eventually lifted; we found a light-filled apartment with space for your plants; and you love being in the office with your coworkers.
Life in Switzerland has been a fantastic experience that I hope will not end soon. The proximity to breathtaking mountains and their outdoor activities are deeply ingrained in the culture here and fit us so well. Our attempts at via ferratas, paragliding, hiking, and kayaking have all created memories. We have made Swiss and Expat friends, and the international makeup of the community brings life and perspective.
There are so many more memories to mention; weekends in New York, Venice, Quito, San Pedro, Sydney, and many more; hiking in the Himalayas; trophies made of cheese; festivals like Oktoberfest, Fasnacht, and Blue Ox music fest; kayaking the NaPali coast; buying a house site unseen, and many more. However, I will take advantage of the fact that we were together for a couple of years before marriage to add two more memories.
Our first Christmas together
We started dating while you lived in Delaware, and I was in Colorado. Partway through, I complicated things further by moving to Chile. We went on dates on five different continents in a year, more often than not, because that was where it was most convenient to get together with our insane schedules at that point in our lives.
It was so special that you traveled to Chile to spend Christmas with me. We backpacked the Torres Del Paine circuit and then joined my family in Turks and Caicos for New Year’s. My mother has told me that was when she understood how serious we were, as it is the only time anyone has brought a partner other than a spouse on a family trip.
… and our second Christmas together.
Many people are nervous at their wedding, but there was none for me; I was ready to be your husband. The nerves came the morning of December 25th, 2023, when I proposed and the weeks leading up to it as I designed the ring and spoke to your parents. The plan to propose Christmas morning resulted from accelerating my plans by a couple of months because you had made it abundantly clear you were ready to be engaged NOW as you were struggling with the fact that you had “moved for a guy.” In hindsight, the fact that you had moved to Texas and had stopped just short of telling me it was time to propose should have quelled my nerves, but there was still something about waiting to hear the actual, definitive answer when I asked the question. I am so happy I didn’t wait any longer and that you said yes that Christmas morning.
Kelsey, I love you with all of my heart and am so thankful for the past ten years. I cannot wait to see what new adventures the next many tens of years hold for us.
Jonathan
Note on the cover image. This is an image that I generated with Dall-E inspired by the lyrics of the American Authors’ song “Best Day of My Life” that Kelsey walked down the aisle to at our wedding, along with a few other details from that day.
Photos: I’ve credited the professional photos. Most of the others are taken by either Kelsey or me with a few taken by travel companions, friends, and family.