one year

I know in comparison to being married for a long time, one year doesn't seem like much but I can still say I CAN'T believe we've married for a year now! I can remember this season we were in last year... I was still on orientation at work, Cody JUST got his job as a youth pastor, Cody was still in school at Tech, I was spending all free time planning our own wedding or being a bridesmaid in someone else's. Now, here we are... Both graduates and alumni of Tech, I feel comfortable in my job, Cody being awesome at his job loving on these youth kids and preaching the Gospel. This past year has been the best even all while me driving 35 min to work and working at night and Cody taking seminary on line after his work day. It's been busy but so much fun. We've definitely learned how important our time together is because half of a week we barely see each other. 

Early on into our marriage we talked about how we both wanted to travel and make an effort to do so, so we do! See the chicago post! We've been able to save some money each month to be able to do so. We talked about going to a different state every anniversary and hopefully see all 50 states! We know that'll just get harder when kiddos and financial changes take place, so we started big with a trip to Chicago. I know the traditional wedding gift for 1 year is paper so... plane tickets? Ha, we didn't do personal gifts for eachother. We just enjoyed our trip and intentional time together. 

We left last Wednesday morning for our trip, but the evening before that we took anniversary pictures (more on that later). I love photography... not in the way that I think I'm a photographer, but that I love capturing the moment and documenting life. I've always scrap-booked and made photo albums for as long as I can remember. So, when it came to our anniversary I wanted to have pictures taken to capture this season.. what we looked like, where we lived, etc. While getting ready for pictures, Cody came home with these beautiful flowers and surprised me! 

 Then we went on to have the perfect trip in the big city. 

We got back late Saturday night and then woke up Sunday morning for church. We were so spoiled with texts from our family when we woke up, a card at church signed by all our youth students, a pumpkin painted by one of our youth students, and many congrats! It was so sweet and we did not expect anyone to make a big deal of our first anniversary, but we're so thankful!

That evening we had trunk or treat at church, no better way to spend your anniversary, right? haha. We were mario and Luigi haha! I can't help but laugh when I see these pictures and how the tiny heads of the masks look our bodies! I wish we had a picture of our "trunk".. we used black/white squared (racetrack) table cloth, had blue tulle hanging as the sky, white "clouds" made of paper, made slipping bananas out of yellow paper and hung yellow plates as tokens to resemble the mario kart game ;) We had so much fun, but apparently we were scary and we made two kids cry, oops!

Once we got home we celebrated our anniversary, frozen cake and all. The cake wasn't that bad, but definitely had the taste of being frozen for a year. We had macarons that we brought back from chicago so we ate those as well. At our wedding we had blank cards and envelopes that people could write on and write a year on it to open, so we opened the first year cards, it was so sweet! I can't wait to read letters that people addressed for 37 years and other later years! we watched our wedding video over again and it was such a sweet reminder of the promise we made to each other a year ago!

now onto year two! it can only get better from here!