ONE.

A long overdue (since it's been ages since I've done one) weekend recap.

Friday and Saturday were spent rehearsing for, and attending, the wedding of good friends of ours. This was made all the more special by the fact that my handsome husband is the one who married them :-)

M got ordained a few years ago to do another wedding and when Chris and Kristin found out, they asked him to do theirs as well. He knows them both really well and is an excellent public speaker so he was a shoe-in.

Sunday, we slept in so we were well rested for a "big" day.

Sunday marks 1 year since we said "I do."  

I think everyone has an idea of how their first year of marriage will look: celebrating all the little firsts- first Thanksgiving, first Christmas, ..and living in your newlywed bubble. Few expect their dad to have a major heart attack just 25 days after the ceremony, requiring quadruple bypass, 11 days in the hospital, rehab, and home care; let alone losing their mother a few weeks after finally getting dad a clean bill of health. Don't get me wrong, we enjoyed the holidays, but there was a definitely an undercurrent of stress and fatigue worrying about my dad. 

That being said, going through all this further cemented that I picked the absolute best guy to do life with. 

Marriage IS the "real stuff" and we went through a shit ton of it this first year. M was the one constant. He visited my dad in the hospital with me nearly every day, and when he wasn't there, it's because he was setting up the house for my dad's arrival home. He slept over at the hospital with us all but 2 or 3 nights the week we lived there essentially to be with my mom. He didn't say a lot, because he knew me well enough to know I just needed someone there. He handled my rough year just the way he needed to and didn't complain once. We survived year 1. I feel pretty confident we'll be able to handle the next 50+ (hopefully less eventful) years together. 

We managed to have a lot of fun on our anniversary: lunch with his mom and my dad, a visit to the zoo where we had our reception, dinner of "fancy cheese pizza" in homage to the most hilarious best man toast, and FINALLY opened up a bottle of wine we got in Malta in 2010 (that turned out to be terrible..woops..) to enjoy with our anniversary cake from our baker. The perfect understated day with my favorite guy.

One gripe: we had talked about our anniversary a few weeks ago and M asked what I was planning on us doing. I said super low key, dinner and the zoo, no gifts or anything huge. I asked him last week whether he got something because he was being cagey. He wouldn't say "no" but I didn't get a yes out of him..so I didn't get him anything. So what does he do but crushes it with THIS gift. Paper for 1 year:

I hadn't even gotten him a card (seriously SO BAD at buying cards, ever.) so of course I see this and burst into tears about being the worst wife ever. I'm going to fucking CRUSH cotton next year. (derp..worst wife.)