Anniversary 1.0

Yesterday Ben and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary! I took the day off originally to spend with him, but then we realized Ben started his LAST semester at the U yesterday and I ended up not being able to see him until about 6:30pm. We originally said no gifts, but that's my love language and I LOVE giving gifts - so I wanted to do something special where it was kind of like a gift to both of us. I had decided on two things:

#1: 50 States by our 50th Anniversary
The 1st year anniversary's symbol is paper and because I love tradition, I decided to get my creative juices flowing and came up with the first gift idea. I have an itch to travel, and you may remember a post a few weeks ago about my discontent with staying in Utah until we're old and wrinkly and not ever traveling outside of this place - which would be fine, I just had to have that reality smack me in the face. So after much prayer and wrestling, I realized if I just went off and explored without Ben, it would suck. So I got a map and printed pictures and dates of all the places we've been to together, or if we had visited that place many times, the very first time, and pinned them to the map. My goal for this project is to document our travels and record them with pictures and travel to all 50 states before our 50th anniversary. He loved it!

 #2: Love Notes and Prophetic Words Notebook
This second gift came from Beautiful Day and I loved the idea! She did two seperate notebooks for these things and I decided to do just 1. She explains it like so, "The love notes one is great because when we don’t see each other as much as we’d like, we can still connect in a tangible way. We wanted to do a notebook for prophetic words because they are powerful. I don’t want to trust in my awful memory to recall words of wisdom spoken over our marriage five years down the road- I want it in front of me where I can see it." I wrote a long love note on the first page explaining both paper gifts and of course telling Ben how madly in love I am with him still.

I decorated our room with a paper banner I made, and got a bottle of wine (that, by the way, was called "Unity" and bottles in 2011!! Cheese, I know but so awesome!!) as well as a 1-year anniversary world's greatest fudge cake that I added Reese's too. Seriously. Best cake I've ever tasted!

Ben finally came home with beautiful pink roses and had made surprise reservations at a fancy-smancy restaurant, Prime Steak House & Piano Bar, in Park City. He told me that he knew how much I love piano bars so he thought this place would be great and it really was AMAZING. We had the best food we've ever eaten in our lives and I wore my new leopard print dress and some high heels - I went all out, people.

It was such a great time of celebration and we're so thankful to all our friends and family who have been on our team this last year. Thank you, again, to all our friends who stood next to us last year and who have truly taken the role of being in our line, to walk with us while we journey through our marriage and help to guide us through, seriously. We love you and count on you to remind us that this isn't really about us, but about our Great God who has blessed us so much through each other.