That wasn't the beginning of "And the Prince and the princess got married and lived happily ever after" There have been tough times in the last 39 years. There have been times that stretched and grew us. There have been heartbreaking losses of the people we have loved all our lives - my mom and dad, Pete's Dad, our beloved grandparents. There has been illness and struggles with jobs. Right now, facing growing old is pretty damn scary.
But there have been times of joy and love which have carried us through the harder times. There are our children and grandchildren - Sarah, Nic, Riaan, Ray, Sihle, Kevin, Emily and Ben - who give us more happiness than anyone should be allowed to have. There is our extended family, our friends, treasured work colleagues. There has been adventure and fun - awesome trips to places near and far.
When we reached our Silver Wedding Anniversary, we decided that instead of a party, we'd plan a special trip and had 2 weeks in London - just before Christmas - it was amazing!
So for our 30th, we decided to do something similar. We were able to stay with a friend of Sarah's and spent 2 weeks in the South of France - we didn't go on our anniversary, because it would have been too cold, but instead, went at the end of the European summer - magic!
When we had been married 35 years, we spent some time in New Zealand with friends who were married 4 days after us, visiting the Taranaki region of the North Island.
So in this 40th year of our marriage, how are we going to celebrate the wonders of such a long term relationship - something that is getting increasingly rarer in the world we live in.
I've been planning for a couple of years - I read an article in an Air New Zealand magazine about a trip from Athens to Istanbul on a small cruise ship and that is what I wanted to do. Lots of research later and a small cruise ship around Croatia became another possibility. And it was all over bar the booking.
UNTIL the Rand went into freefall and we had to say that a trip to Europe and Asia was not going to happen this year.
We've kicked around lots of other ideas - Zanzibar, Lamu, Mauritius, other places in Southern Africa like Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland - but this is what we have finally come up with.
40 "adventures" this year - some big, some small, but all mindfully celebrating the "ever after" that we embarked on in 1975.
We've done some already - so watch this space as I chronicle the 40 Ruby dates we're going to have this year.
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