I have the most wonderful husband. I came home yesterday from work to find a bright yellow viola plant waiting to greet me with the sweetest note from Mark. It sounds like I'm inciting a metaphor for our relationship, but I will plant these annual flowers in our garden to care for and nurture them, hopefully they will reseed and continue to grow and blossom for years to come. This is our 5th wedding anniversary, at least the one we celebrate, the one that counts in our eyes. I can sit back and reflect on what a good year the past 12 months have been and they only mirror how amazing our lives together have been. I'm afraid I'm just going to repeat what I wrote last year. Life is amazing with a partner who loves and truly respects you. There is no sadness, no angst, no frustration, no drama. Interestingly enough, checking the link from last year, although common law marriages before September of last year are still recognized as valid, Pennsylvania no longer recognizes them. I just wanted to refer to the law again, since people like to throw the urban myths at us about us not living together for seven years. Actually the states that recognize common law marriage have no defined time limitation, read the law. Mark and I met the four criteria for PA common law when we declared ourselves as married, living together, filing jointly on our taxes, claiming me on his health insurance, one year after we started dating. April 10th is the day he came home from work and asked, 'do you want to get married?' and I obviously replied, 'of course!' We shook on it and the rest is history. Life is good and only getting better. The book I'm reading has me daydreaming a lot about when Mark and I find that cabin in the woods to live in. Although not quite so rustic as the author, he goes on in great detail about digging his new outhouse and installing a phone and answering machine in his neighbors outhouse which is a twenty mile run to any electricity. No, we will have indoor plumbing and electricity :) I was salivating over the house we saw for sale along side a sizable reservoir surrounded with trees when we went for a meandering drive last night into the sticks. (I have to find this locale on a map, the roads were so long and twisty I have no idea where we were, I need to orient myself). Five or six years we'll start looking. It is an adventure we