One Year!

Evan and I have been married for a whole year! Yay! As trite as it sounds, this year has flown by, and I'm glad that I have had the awesome opportunity and (some) free time to chronicle this awesome first year of our lives together. Thanks for coming along on this awesome ride!

This has been an incredibly busy summer for us, and we really haven't had a lot of time together, so we wanted to relax and spoil ourselves on our anniversary. And we did. You should probably find a comfy place to sit and maybe grab a snack, because this blog post is gonna be long.

We kicked off our anniversary weekend with me going into my new job for five hours. Yeah, you read that right; I am now employed and no longer a substitute! Hurray! It was actually pretty awesome to get a job the week of our anniversary. And it was even better to go in a month before my official start date to help my new Principal and Vice Principal conduct a few interviews. I got paid a very decent amount to ask two questions to five candidates in Spanish, and I walked away with a nifty amount of moolah to help us celebrate.

My old Middle School, where I will be teaching 7th Grade Language Arts! 

As soon as I got home from work, (yay new job! Stay tuned for a blog post about that!) we headed to Portland to get a couple's massage. It was AMAZING. It was in this tiny, hole in the wall place in a part of Portland that had me looking skeptically at Evan almost the entire drive there, but it was fantastic. Our massage therapists spent 90 minutes massaging out every knot and tense muscle in my body. I'm pretty sure she actually decapitated me at one point; my neck felt so long and loose. Thankfully, she reattached it at some point and sent us home super relaxed and ready to tackle the next 30 years of married life.

That night, we went to Helium Comedy Club to see Adam Ferrara, a comedian that we've liked since we were unmarried whippersnappers in college. We had an absolutely fantastic time. Adam was super funny, and it was great to spend the night laughing, having a few drinks, and really setting the mood for the rest of the weekend. We had never been to a comedy show before, and it was really fun to try that together for the first time.

Such a funny guy! I didn't actually get a picture with him, because I was too shy.

Saturday was our actual anniversary, and it was so awesome to wake up next to my awesome husband and just feel incredibly grateful for such a great person to spend the rest of my life with. I felt even more grateful when he offered to make pancakes and bacon (my personal favorite breakfast foods that I would have every day were it not for the rather unfortunate physical and cholesterol side effects) to start our day. I hopped out of bed to start getting his gifts in order. Little did he know that he had quite the adventure ahead of him. I wrapped his presents and then promptly hid them in our car, much to his confusion.

After our wonderful breakfast, I opened my gifts from him, and I was totally blown away. He had very carefully chosen some of our favorite wedding pictures and had them framed in some beautiful dark wood matted frames. The tears were already going pretty decently at that point, but what really got me blubbering was his final gift: our vows done in absolutely gorgeous calligraphy. It was so wonderful to see our vows, which mean so much to the both of us, presented in such a great way, and it brought all the feelings from the year before front and center. Plus, it was awesome to know that Evan's Aunt Sandy had done the calligraphy for us.

Our vows! 

So many amazing memories! 

My favorite! 

So, at this point, I'm feeling like a schmuck because my wonderful husband has given me this incredible, sentimental gift, and all that I've given him thus far on our anniversary is a card. Argh. He loved the card though, and inside, he found a notecard that read: "They say marriage is based on trust, right? Well, trust me to lead me to your presents!" I then handed him the tie he wore on our wedding day, and proceeded to essentially kidnap my husband.

This is what Evan found on Saturday morning. 

I felt like Jack Bauer. And now that I think of it, people must have thought it strange for a woman to be driving with a blind-folded man in a Subaru Forester through the suburbs of Beaverton. Then again, I find it strange that no one stopped me.

My captive. I mean, husband. I thought the wedding tie was a nice touch. 

 Anyway, my husband thought he had it all figured out when we recognized where we were and guessed that our final destination would be his parent's house. Wrong. I just needed to stop there to get a bigger car. In an even cooler Jack Bauer-esque move, I led my still blind-folded husband from one car to his parent's Suburban, put his hand on the door handle, and said, "Get in." 

This is, I think, where Evan started to get a bit worried. "What are we doing in the Suburban?" He asked.

"Don't worry about it," I replied, praying to every god, goddess, saint, and woodland deity that I wouldn't drive the massive Suburban into every other car on the road. "Now let me drive this thing."

You have to understand that the largest thing I've driven to date is my little old Flying Avocado (officially, a 1997 Toyota Rav4) and it pees itself a little bit whenever I park it next to a car even remotely resembling a Suburban. But, I was on a mission, so on I went.

By some miracle, I managed to get Evan, myself, and the Suburban to our final destination unscathed. Once there, I instructed Evan to stay in the car while I clambered out of it (honestly, it's so high up I thought I might need a parachute to make it safely down out of the driver's seat) and set up Evan's present. This took a bit of finagling, but I managed to wrestle it out of our friend Travis' garage and out into the driveway. After a bit of staging, I brought Evan out of the car, and took the blindfold off, where he could finally see his brand new gas grill, grilling tools, and grilling book! He'd been talking about wanting a grill for a long time, and I had been hiding this one in various garages since May. It was great finally being able to give that to him and see his face light up. "Is it for me?"  So cute.

So excited! 

Grilling accoutrements. 

Standing with his manly new grill! Now to make it fit in the Suburban...

What was not so cute was wedging the poor thing in the back of the Suburban. After some impressive Tetris type moves, we got it back there and brought it home, where it now resides proudly on our deck.

After the grill adventure, we set out to go and pick up our one year anniversary cake! I've honestly been so excited about this because I didn't get a chance to have a lot of cake after the wedding, what with all the excitement flowing about. Our bakery does this cool thing and actually bakes you a new little cake for your one year anniversary so you're not having to gnaw on some brick of freezer-burned cake. Anyway, we really didn't waste any time in cutting into this one (have I mentioned that MyFitnessPal is totally oblivious to any of this occurring? Calories don't count on your anniversary, birthday, or wedding day. At least that's what I tell myself) and savoring every bite. Plus, it was nice to not be wearing a corset this time around.

How cute is this!? Totally worth waiting a year for. 

Some lemon poppyseed with some lemon chiffon filling goodness. 

That evening (I told you this was long. Did you get a snack? Go get one. I got one as I was writing this) we got spiffed up, went down to Portland, and checked into the Downtown Marriot for our "staycation." When we checked in, we were told that we would be on the 20th floor. I got vertigo just thinking about it. For those of you that don't know, I'm just slightly terrified of anything taller than a step stool. But, I gamely rode the elevator for what felt like years until we got to the very top of the world, it seemed. Our room did have a great view of the city, though. And it was super nice to not be surrounded by laundry, grad school homework, or cat hair for once.

Our awesome view! I took this picture then carefully backed away from the window. 

We then made our way to the Melting Pot, where we had an awesome time eating cheese fondue, cooking salmon, mahi mahi, steak, and duck right at our table (I was slightly paranoid about food poisoning, but I got over it by my second glass of wine) and then totally indulging in some S'mores chocolate fondue for dessert with strawberries, bananas, and marshmallows to dip in it. Oh, so GOOD! The best thing about it all was really sitting back and enjoying each other's company, away from all the little (and big) stresses in our lives. I wasn't chatting with Teacher Evan or Grad Student Evan, I was talking to Husband Evan, and it was wonderful. We ate, we drank, we reminisced about our favorite wedding moments, and we had an amazing time. When we got back to hotel, we met up with Ashley, one of my bridesmaids and best friends, and her boyfriend Brian, who happened to be staying in the same hotel that night for a nightcap and some wonderful conversation. It was a great night. 

Our little cooktop thingy. 

Us looking all snazzy for dinner! 

The various wonderful goodies to dip into our S'mores Chocolate Fondue. 

They brought this out just for us! I immediately ate the strawberries. 

The next morning, we ordered breakfast and mimosas in bed, and since I was finally over the fact that I was 200 feet off of the ground, we watched Portland wake up and even saw a bride getting into her car on the way to (hopefully to, and not away from; let's stay optimistic) her wedding.  It really brought the whole weekend full circle. I wished that this bride was marrying someone fantastic. Someone who would stand by her through their first year, through all the trials and triumphs that Life can throw at you. Someone who would love them completely for who they are. I wished that bride all the happiness in the world, because a year before, Evan had granted me just that.

Drool-worthy, right?

Coffee and mimosas! 

The celebrating couple under the influence of rather strong mimosas, as pirates. What else are fancy hotel napkins for, right? 

It has been an incredible year, and I know that we will just continue to make so many happy memories together as we tackle this amazing journey together. I know there will be hard times, but they will just make us stronger. I know there will wonderful moments that will make us stand in awe of each other. I know that through everything, we will love each other, as our vows say, in the only way we know how, completely and always.

Marriage is awesome. Happy 1st Anniversary!