Dear Clark

5 years ago today we were married in the Salt Lake temple.

It was a perfect day and we were so happy to celebrate with family and good friends.

Were you there?

Our wedding pretty much lasted 3 weeks with receptions to follow in Boise and Durango. You took me on a fun honeymoon to San Francisco. We had so many fun adventures. 2 of our adventures make good metaphors for how our marriage has been the past 5 years...

One day of our trip we decided to rent one of these Go-Cars.

These tiny little cars are steet legal! We picked up our car right in the middle of downtown San Francisco. We naively put on our little helmets and hit the busy city streets.

We had only gone about 2 blocks before a black truck about plowed us down, apparently in our little 2 foot car we were in his blind spot. You did some fancy maneuvering and after some very tense minutes got us out of downtown and into the more touristy areas where we felt a bit safer!

Since we didn't have a rental car for our trip we decided it would be fun to drive this little Go-Car down Lombard Street, the twistiest road in America.

Each Go-Car came equipped with a built in GPS so we could just type in our destination and follow the directions. When I typed in Lombard Street the route the GPS wanted us to take was crazy long! Since we only had our car for a limited time I looked at the map and said, "there is a way faster way to get there, heck with this GPS, I'll tell you where to drive and then we'll have time to go somewhere else." I then turned off the GPS and started navigating with the map.

I found the street that leads to Lombard Street and we were on our way. What I didn't know is how steep the street was, and how the little Go-Cars pretty much have no guts to go up hills (hence the reason the GPS was taking us on the long/non hilly route to Lombard Street).

We made it about halfway up the super STEEP street and our car just stopped moving, you had the throttle pushed as far as it would go and we were at a complete standstill. I glanced behind us and saw that there was a whole line of cars stopped behind us as well.

I thought that maybe if we had less weight the car would go, so I jumped out...but nothing! You started yelling at me to push, I got us about 6 more inches and then we were stalled again. At first both of us in our state of newly wedded bliss were laughing at the situation, but at this point we realized we were in quite a pickle and it got a bit scary. We knew we had to turn the car around. With me pushing and you trying to steer, hold the throttle and push at the same time we got the car turned around, avoiding hitting a parked car on the side of the road by an inch!

The line of angry drivers behind us quickly drove by and I quickly snapped this picture of our almost turned around car.

We jumped back in our Go-Car and immediately turned the GPS back on and decided to follow the long, but oh so safe directions, to get us to Lombard Street!

We had a lot of fun experiencing Lombard Street from a tiny little car.

So how does this relate to our marriage the last 5 years?

Well, we've definitely learned that there are no shortcuts to get anywhere worth going. We've had a few uphill moments where it took both of us pushing to make it to the top. I think that when we find ourselves in a pickle we've learned how to evaluate the situation, turn around, find the better way and laugh at ourselves.

Another day of our trip we decided to rent a tandem bike and ride across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito.

We had so much fun riding our bike along the beach. Then we went through a gorgeous park to get up to the bridge. I was overwhelmed by the beautiful trees and flowers, just loving the ride, I didn't even notice we were going up a pretty steep hill. I promise I thought I was peddling!

About half way up the hill you yelled back to me in a very winded voice that we needed to stop. So we pulled over and I noticed that you were quite out of breath, about ready toc ollapse. I thought, wow you must not be in very good shape, because I felt great! Then you pointed out that just because my feet were moving with the peddles didn't mean I was peddling. You had pretty much been peddling both of us up the hill by yourself while I enjoyed the beautiful ride! I'm still laughing about this one.

After that I put a little more effort into it and we had a wonderful day in Sausalito!

So I think this one could apply to our marriage in a lot of ways. But mostly right now I think it fits that you are working so hard in school so you can be prepared to provide for our family, allowing me to stay home with our fun little boys and just enjoy the ride!

The past 5 years have gone by really fast! I think we've both grown and learned a lot. In the past 5 years we've:

added 2 wonderful little boys to our family,

earned 2 degrees, with 2 more in the works,

had 5 jobs and 10 church callings,

visited 16 states, lived in 2 states and 3 cities,

made 1,000,000,000 (approximately) wonderful memories!

Thanks for a great 5 years and for being a better husband than I could have even imagined I was marrying on August 13, 2005. I love you!