Monday, December 10, 2012

Nearly 20 Years

On December 19, Matt and I will celebrate twenty years of marriage.  Gosh, neither of us feels “that old”!!!  We got married when I was 21 and Matt was 22.  Head-over-heels in love, blissfully naïve, and faithfully dedicated till death do us part.

photo 2

 

Nearly four years later, God blessed us with our first child.

photo 3

(Parker’s 2-month birthday picture)

 

And now, almost twenty years after we shared our wedding vows, take a look at this delightfully crazy crew God has blessed us with:

patterson kids goofy oct 2012

 

In a few days, Matt and I will be flying to {hopefully} attend the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) in Las Vegas.  Here we are in 2007, celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary at the NFR (we only had 3 kiddos in 2007!):

NFR moose ride 002

 

We’re totally doing this trip the cheapskate way, that’s the Matt and Lorraine Patterson way! Smile  A friend gave us free tickets to fly Southwest, but we have to fly standby.  (Thanks, Erin…and Nicole!)  The flights are really full, so we’re praying God will give us seats to get us there and back.  This is a super way for us to fly because we never know if a kid is going to end up hospitalized, so we won’t be out any money on airline tickets if something comes up and we’re not able to go to the NFR.

 

We got a fabulous rate on a hotel room in Las Vegas.  We don’t gamble, so we don’t care about the casinos, but Las Vegas lodging is inexpensive because they want people to spend their money gambling.  Great deal for us!  And, again, room is refundable if something comes up that prevents us from going to Las Vegas.

 

The only thing we’re trying to figure out now are NFR tickets.  For those of you unfamiliar with the NFR, it’s the biggest rodeo of the year.  It’s like the World Series of rodeos.  We’ll be in Las Vegas for the last three nights of the rodeos, which are all sold out. 

 

Of course we can buy tickets via Craigslist or eBay or a variety of online ticket sales sights, but everyone is selling their tickets for about quadruple (sometimes more) of face value because the rodeos are all sold out.  We just don’t want to spend that type of money to see a rodeo, so we’re praying for God to show us a way to find tickets at or near face value.

 

If all else fails, we’ll watch the NFR via the live stream in the theater at the hotel we’re staying at.  That’s free.  And our meals at the hotel are free, too.  Awesome, huh?  This is less expensive than staying at a local bed and breakfast (which we normally do for our anniversaries). 

 

Woohoo, we’re so excited to take a little vacation for just the two of us to celebrate the twenty years of marriage God has blessed us with!!!  Please pray for well children (and well parents!), no emergencies, no hospitalizations, seats on the flights there and back, and maybe even some affordable NFR tickets!!!

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