From now on - if you want to know how many days we've been married, you'll have to do the math yourself! I'm done with "Day ###" posts, woo!
On to the main topic of this post, our anniversary! Without the help of this blog, I would probably say that we've had a relatively uneventful year. Ha! Looking back through all of our blog posts, Eric and I have chosen our top ten moments of the past year. Enjoy!
10. KU - We listened a lot of games on the radio, watched some on TV, went to two football games and two basketball games.
9. Cooking - We definitely don't cook regularly, but we have branched out this year. Among other things, we've made smoothies, grilled, made birthday cakes, made use of our halogen oven, and made Oreo truffles, yum!
8. Stuff - Eric and I went a little crazy on new stuff this year... We got a new TV, I got a computer, Eric got an iPod, we transferred to our own cell phone plan (then moved to a new company and got new phones), we got the most glorious heating blankets (while Black Friday shopping), a new camera, bedside tables, a coffee table, and a smaller kitchen table and chairs! Yikes, so much STUFF! But we also got rid of TONS of junk - selling, donating, and trashing!
7. Motorcycle - After our August garage sale, Alan bought a motorcycle for Eric to use. He's since become totally confident and a great rider. He even got his own helmet this spring, and changed his oil in our parking lot this summer!
6. Travel - We made it to Michigan twice (for Cash's 2nd birthday and Declan's 1st birthday), and to Chicago and Mexico for our honeymoon! Also, I made the drive to Hays with Ashley to visit her future college.
5. Church - I'm so happy that I/we've started going to church regularly. Ashley and I were confirmed and Andrew was baptized at St. Thomas, and it's really nice to visit Grammy's tree every week.
4. Jobs - Eric's new job was a huge success for us time wise, financially, and for Eric's happiness with his work. My new job is exciting because it means I still HAVE a job, but less exciting becaus I am transferring from Prairie Park to Kennedy Elementary.
3.Spending more time with family and friends - We've done so much this year, including birthdays (Eric's Granny's 99th birthday), Friends of Friends parties, playing with babies, going to game nights, helping Papa move, drinking at Old Chicago, and we've been on 3 camping trips this summer (and already have at least one more planned).
2. Money - We have gotten our act together financially and started impacting others. This year Mom, Alan, Paul, Deb, Molly, Nate, Papa, Ashley, and Alison all went through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. Eric and I paid off both of our credit cards, my car, and camethiiiiiiisclose to paying off his car too. We set up a debt thermometer in our living room to keep an eye on our progress. We did a bunch of pet sitting to make extra money over the holidays, and submitted a video (and made it into the top ten finalists) for Dave's Great Giving Challenge. Finally, we had VIP seats at Dave Ramsey's LIVE! Total Money Makeover event, and got to meet Dave!
1. Us! In the past year, we have done so much for us! The wedding and anniversary were our biggest moments. But all the small pieces are part of the puzzle too - movies (Harry Potter and others), Netflix, going for walks, bike rides, and rollerblading, golfing, rearranging and decluttering the house, Tuesday & Thursday visits to Buffalo Wild Wings, and our green initiatives of line drying, recycling, no longer using plastic bottled water or soda, reading more books (such as the Hunger Games trilogy), and Eric graduated from JCCC!
Furthermore, we planned a fun little celebration for ourselves. We both worked today, so the festivities didn't start until after 5pm. We cleaned up and got ready at Mom & Alan's house, and then took off for the Legend's shopping center. We started by buying tickets to Hangover 2, and grabbing a drink at Yardhouse until it was time for our movie. The movie was hysterical - Eric actually had to ask me to stop hitting him because I kept slapping his arm at the funny parts. After the movie, we retreated back to Yardhouse for dinner. Our waiter, Justin, was awesome and took great care of us.
Toward the end of dinner, the sky opened up and we knew we would be walking to the car in the rain. Eric offered to go pick up the car, but I knew I wouldn't melt and running to the car in the warm rain was so much more fun. Once we got home, we cut into our year old wedding cake top tier...and it was delicious! Still moist cake and creamy icing, and deliciously almond flavored! Yum!
Here's to hoping that our future years continue to be as exciting and loving as our first!
Our drinks at the Yardhouse
I had the Belgian Shandy - Strongbow Cider and Leffe Blond, and Eric had a Youngberry Chocolate - Lideman's Framboise and Young's Double Chocolate.
There was a commercial before the movie featuring Cole Aldrich, yea!
There was a lot of cool art at the Yardhouse.
Eric's appetizer was a fancy egg roll.
I had A california roll - a single giant rice patty, topped with chopped cucumber, shredded crab, and orange ball things. It had seaweed strips rolled around the outside, was topped with large pieces of avocado and crab, then surrounded by wasabi sauce.
Eric's bbq pizza.
My margherita pizza.
Us at dinner - poorly lit and low resolution, nothing could be done to salvage it!
The appetizers and dinners were on the happy menu and 1/2 off, and they took our drinks off the bill for our anniversary. So our bill should have been around $60, and it was only $24! We tipped our friend Justin $17 for his excellent service.
Damn, we are a good looking couple!
The beer room at Yardhouse. Eric's new life goal is to have a keg room and a bar with taps in our future home!
We got soaked running to the car in the rain - but it was so fun to be out in the warm rain, laughing and splashing through puddles.
The cake looked perfect when we cut into it - only a little squished from being vacuum sealed and frozen for the past year!
NOM! It tasted delicious! Moist almond cake, and creamy buttercream icing!
So good that we even had seconds.
We also paid $2000 toward Eric's car today - we have climbed 22 inched (aka, paid off $22k in debt!) in the past year!
AAAAAANNNNNDDDD we finally made it above the couch's armrest! Hooray! In one more month we will OWN both of our cars!
