One Year Ago...

... I wanted to say today, but I didn't get around to posting on the actual day, sooooo, on Sunday Dave and I celebrated our first anniversary. Doesn't really seem possible, but then I look at these pictures and in some ways they seem like a long long time ago. Time is so funny that way. It's been fun looking back and remembering the big day. It inspired me to post a bunch of pictures - some of the behind the scenes fun stuff that you might not have seen. Or maybe you have. Or maybe you haven't but you find them entirely boring, in which case you should stop reading immediately. This feels sort of self-centered for a happy anniversary post because Dave's not in most of the pictures. It's all about what I was doing the day before and the morning of the wedding. I also hope that's okay and the marriage gods don't unleash their fury. Anyway, what a crazy time. I would never want to do over the stress and craziness, but once we got down to about the day before, then it was just fun, because there were so many people around to visit and everything was coming together. (credit goes to Jenni for I think all of these pics)
I think this was Thursday - Jenni and I getting our nails done. Incidentally, they did a terrible job on my fingernails and they were pretty chipped for the wedding. ah well. (I don't know why some of these pics turned out sorta grainy)
What a total blast - seeing people I hadn't seen in ages! We had breakfast on Friday morning - mostly Red Lake people, but a few other great friends as well. (side note - I think Robyn and LaRonda were so overcome by joy at seeing all these wonderful people that they reverted back to the 12 year old practice of calling each other up and saying " hey, what are you wearing to the brunch? Brown? Cool! We can MAAATTTCHH!" They were also really cute and coordinating in black shirts at the wedding... hmmmmm....sorta makes ya wonder. Actually, they probably just have similar good taste, but I couldn't resist. I remember calling up these girls before Sunday night church (about 400 years ago) - hey, what are you wearing? such silliness)
Rhonda praying that the cake will turn out alright?


Rhonda singing a song over the wedding cake. A traditional Israeli blessing maybe?
Twila and the tater salad.

The morning of - doing make up in my empty Indiana bedroom.
At the hairdresser - my sweetie had flowers sent there for me! (yikes - I think the theory behind all the make up was that some of it is bound to come off by picture time, so better pile it on good and proper.)
Alabama - didn't look like she was suffering too badly.
wowzers
So pretty! - Jenni and Alabama

Getting ready at the church



Fast forward several hours -

It's sort of weird for the first year to be over. Now we're just old married fogies. = ( haha. No excuse to do something fun on the 9th of every month anymore - one year and two months - whoo hoo. = ( But it is fun to look ahead and wonder where in the world we'll be in 2 or 3 years from now. As for our weekend, let's see. On Saturday, we went to see the Julia/Julie movie. It was pretty good and quite humorous at parts, but by the end, I was ready for it to be over. Then we had a really nice dinner a place called the Grill Room. It was the best blueberry iced tea I've ever had. Sunday afternoon we were going to go on this safari thing. It sounds really neat - you take a covered wagon ride and there's all these animals that'll come up to the wagon - zebras, giraffes, etc, (but no elephants = ( ). It sounded like it would be a lot of fun, but Sunday rolled around and it was so hot that the thought of sitting in a covered wagon, just wasn't the happiest. We still want to do it, but maybe in November or something like that. So we ended up going to the Houmas House plantation about an hour from here. It was SO neat and I kept thinking of all my friends and family that I'd love to take there. = ) The tour was led by a jolly black lady and she was phenomenal - so very funny, she had some amazing pipes and sang a couple times, and played a piano that was there. I don't remember the name of it, but there are only I think she said 60 in the States. She had a lot of interesting history to share as well. For instance, she was talking about how you don't hear this, but there were actually free African Americans who owned slaves. She said her father's side of the family came from slavery, but her mother's side of the family owned slaves. All very interesting. And the place was beautiful and here's the really really terrible thing - I remembered the camera but forgot the memory card! We were so bummed. We might have to go back sometime just to take pictures - probably won't pay for the tour again though. Anyway, it was all really fun.

In other news, we are finally making some serious progress in unpacking. The living room isn't the best and is covered in empty boxes, but the empty is a good sign, right? We got a lot done in the spare room - Dave got more done than I did. I unpacked a bunch of our books, then sat and stared at the mess and wondered what to do next. I've been doing that a lot lately. I can't believe how fast my vacation time has flown by. I'd like to get a bunch more done before I go back to work, but I also want to swim in our pool and have some fun too. hmmmm... Well, I'm sure I've bored you long enough, so I should let you go now. Have a happy day.