Crawfish Boil & Vow Renewal

It's hard to believe it, but our tenth wedding anniversary is this week!  This past Saturday, we had a crawfish boil for our community group from church, and we decided that since it was going to be so close to our anniversary that it would be a nice time to renew our vows.  A friend of ours Jason Polk, who is the worship pastor at Grace PCA Church led us through our vows.  Jason and his wife, Liz, were some of the people that we met after moving to St. Louis, and they are dear friends.  We were so glad that they could be with us to celebrate our anniversary! They are in the process of moving to Ethiopia as missionaries, which thrills my heart. You can read about their work here: On the Ground.

 My friend Jamie made these fabulous cupcakes that were reminiscent of my wedding cake.  The butterflies were made out of chocolate, and they were edible!  She is so talented.

 The little boys were intrigued by the crawfish, and I don't think they were convinced that they were food and not bugs.

 Daisy found a place to hang out, but Lily had to stay in the house.  Lily, our little Sheltie, is not fond of crowds.  We should have kept  her in the house in to begin with, but I wanted to see if she could cope with the company.  She could not.  She almost caught herself on fire.  She got freaked out by something harmless and ran to James just after he had gotten the gas lit on the burner for the crawfish.  She got too close to the burner, and her fur got singed.  I'm just glad she was not hurt.  James put her in the basement after that.

 James wanted to see how boiled shrimp would be with the crawfish.  He put them in with the crawfish after they had finished cooking.  The shrimp were really good!

We asked Jason to read Ephesians 5 and he talked about what a covenant means and he and some of our friends prayed with us. He also gave us some words of wisdom regarding parenting as we prepare to bring our daughter home.

It was a great evening!  We both meant our vows the first time we said them, but it was sweeter this time because of the history that James and I had together.  James has been with me in the good times and bad times, in sickness and in health.  As we said our vows on Saturday, I had memories of James staying by my side in a hospital and caring for me and encouraging me going through my mind.  I'm delighted to be his wife.  It was wonderful to share the evening with friends who have prayed with us, grieved with us, and rejoiced with us.  Thank you to everyone who was able to be there!  I'll post our vows later this week.