celebration.

on monday i celebrated being married to my best friend, better half, partner in ministry, answered prayer for one whole year.

i will not say our first year of marriage was easy by any means.. but i wouldn't trade all the tears, stress, selflessness, arguments, make-ups, laughter, hurt, adventures over the past year for anything else with anyone else.

mr. b is my prince charming and my answered prayer. as you read in our [love story series] he is an answered prayer. i prayed for him for years.

as we were reminiscing on our first year of marriage monday evening, we laughed at all the things we've done and laid there in amazement at all the grace and blessings the Lord has shed on us.

here is how we spent our first anniversary.

mr. b and i were going to go camping in a city we've never been to over this past weekend. we were planning on waking up and then touring the city and going wine tasting and for a hike in the late afternoon. we then were either going to come back.. or we were going to stay another night there and camp and then make sure we were back early sunday morning for church.

these plans were set and we were ready to finish packing up and heading out on the 4 hour drive until the weather changed. now.. being from the midwest..
the weather can change at any moment. the weatherman will say one thing and while he's talking about sunshine and no chance of rain - it will start raining.
it's crazy.
well, over the afternoon the weather shifted and rain came in. it rained and rained and rained. we debated going.. and thought sure, at least we'll have saturday to be outside. well.. the weather continued to change and there was now forecasted rain and storms coming the whole weekend.
so we decided against going.. but we weren't going to let the weather dampen our anniversary.
we thought about going somewhere closer and staying in a nice hotel with a 'romantic package'.
and still decided we didn't feel like putting our money into a hotel we would hang out at for a couple hours, sleep and then leave..
so we brought the adventures indoors and camped in our living room!

we had a blast! it was SO much fun to be a kid again and build a sweet fort together. we went and rented a movie and got all cozy and spent the night in our own home, but a different style. it was so much fun we kept the fort up and spent the night there saturday night too.
i know.. we're dorks. it was seriously like we were kids and didn't want to take it down!

monday was our actual one year anniversary and mr. b came home with orange roses [orange is my favorite color!] and a card.
he told me he had a surprise idea.
so i waited for him to get home from work and he wanted to treat me to dinner.
we went to a restaurant in town that i have been wanting to go to for about a year!
what a great idea!
after dinner, we came back and shared a piece of our anniversary cake [which was still SUPER moist and still extremely delicious!! i only got one bite of our wedding cake the night of our wedding - so this was wonderful!]
we popped open our 'anniversary wine' that we started a tradition with :) we will continue to share that bottle of wine on each anniversary in the glasses we first toasted in as husband and wife!
we opened up our cards for each other and shared in smiles, laughter, tears and wonderful memories our first year has brought!

we are SO blessed and excited to see what the Lord has in store for us for year number two!!
i love you my husband! what a wonderful wonderful anniversary it was!


ps... tomorrow things are going to be different. very different. i am SO excited and you should be too! get ready, friends - dreams are about to start coming true!