9 Years of Legally Binding

On November 28th Darren and I celebrated 9 years of legally binding marriage. For those who are from China or lived there before then you probably know what this means. It's one of the functions of the life Darren and I chose, naively ,when we were in our twenties.
"Why don't we get married in China?"
"Sure, that sounds great!"
And away we went. For those who haven't heard the story it involves 10 taxis, a patient Chinese friend translating, a humilating physical exam that determined we were ok to breed, and a patridge in a pear tree.
How did we, given all that, choose to give birth in Shenyang about a year and a half after that experiance? I do not know. That experiance however, has been good for some laughs as well.
What all of this means is that in addition to carry around an American and Australian passport for both boys, we also carry a Chinese birth certificate, and an American consular report of birth abroad.
This doesn't get us started on our marriage. At the end of the 10 taxis etc... we had to wait four weeks for a telephone call to Darren that said our marriage paperwork had come through the system. Darren turn to me,( I was cooking and he had been mashing potatoes for the big Thanksgiving Dinner in Shenyang), and said, " Our marriage paperwork has come through."
I didn't really react. I was in the middle of a project and I was happy but what did this mean anyway. We still had the wedding ceremony exactly a month away so...
Then Darren says, " So now we are legally married, you know if we got cold feet now and didn't go through with it we would actually have to get a divorce."
Ok, so I admit that got through. That was a bit more shocking. That was serious.
Consequently after our wedding ceremony Darren asked which anniversary we should celebrate. I didn't care as long as it was one of them and it didn't have to be the same one each year. Darren has never failed to remember both every year.
The rest of the story is that we have two marriage certificates. Both in Chinese, and one of which lists me as Chinese. In addition we have the official translation and in addition to that we have the official translation which was recently registered at a court house in Colorado.
This is the paperwork we carry with us every time we travel as a family.
Airport officials love us.