Our story was always meant to be an adventure.

Guy in Wisconsin takes a leap of faith, packs his belongings into his blue VW Jetta and moves to a new city seven hours from home where he knows only two people.

Girl in Nebraska craves excitement but is stuck in a mind-numbing job, so she purchases a one-way ticket to move to a different city…seven time zones away.

I was on my way out of town and he was on his way in. We easily could have completely missed each other and never have been any wiser. Of course, if that had happened I’d be writing this about my exotic European husband and his dreamy accent instead of Steve and his REALLY dreamy Wisconsin accent don’t-cha-know-hey. Luckily, as chance, or God, or the universe would have it, our paths crossed. And life was turned upside down and right side up all at once.

I only knew Steve for two months before I left my home in Omaha for the biggest adventure (up to that point) of my life. Prior to meeting him I had decided to go to Prague to get my TEFL certificate and spend some time teaching English abroad. The fairytale Czech capital had captured my heart while I was studying in the Czech Republic during college, and it kept finding its way into my daydreams and beckoning me to return. Of course, as I was planning and preparing for my move to Prague I had no idea that I was about to meet, fall in love with, and have to say a tearful goodbye to my future husband. But, that’s exactly how it happened. And it was completely perfect.

Steve and I met in Omaha. I moved to Prague. We racked up obscenely expensive long distance phone bills. (If only Skype had been around back then!) He visited. And just over ten years ago, on January 22, 2004, after drinking multiple bottles of wine in a lovely little Italian restaurant near Staroměstské náměstí , Steve said he thought we should get married. I agreed.

And that leads us to today and the reason for writing this. September 25th of this year will be our tenth wedding anniversary. It occurred to us that we wanted to do something meaningful to celebrate the milestone and the fact that after ten years, two kids, two cats, a house and many other adventures, we still love each other to pieces. But what to do? Dinner and a movie seems kind of busch league for such a big event. We considered the traditional week-long vacation to some tropical location – tempting for sure. But because we’ve never actually been very traditional, and because it seemed SO overwhelming to pick just one perfect vacation spot, we came up with the idea:10 for 10. Instead of doing one big thing to celebrate ten years together, we’d celebrate for one year with ten new experiences.

So, where will we go? What will we do? How will we actually carry out this 10 for 10 adventure? Those are the questions we are still figuring out. The plan for now is:

We will travel outside of Omaha on ten different occasions in 2014. At least one of the ten experiences must be in a city neither of us have ever visited. The experiences will be a mix between family travel with the kids and trips sans children. Along the way we will try to find at least one way to “pay it forward” or “give back” to remind us to always be appreciative of our opportunities and experiences. Finally, we will be blogging about our travels so we can share our adventures with family and friends, and also so we will have a record of our experiences when we are old and gray(er).

We kicked off our journey last weekend in Madison, Wisconsin, the same place where Steve and I took our first road trip together in August of 2003. Out of all the times I have been to Madison in the past ten years this was one of the most memorable. Our weekend included meeting some amazing new people, a Badger hockey game, a personal tour of the Wisconsin state capitol building, dinner at one of the 100 best restaurants in the U.S., brewery and distillery tours, lots of cheese and winter fun. Stay tuned for more about adventure number 1 of 10.

Steve and I invite you to travel along with us either by following our blog or making plans to meet-up with us on one of our nine remaining trips. We welcome suggestions for places to visit and things to do during our 10 for 10 adventure. Leave us a comment if you have a recommendation.