I can't believe that we have already been married a year! It feels like I have known Darren my whole life but when I think back to our wedding day it feels like it was just a couple weeks ago! We have had such a wonderful year together and have made so many new memories! I am so lucky to have married Darren. Really, I didn't even know how lucky I was on the day I married him. He has exceeded all of my expectations and he continues to surprise me in being so perfect. I feel so blessed to get to share eternity with him. He is the greatest guy I know, and I truly mean that. Our anniversary was on Sunday this year so we celebrated on Saturday and Sunday. The week before could not have been more busy with school, and even on the weekend we both had tests...but we set aside some time together so we could celebrate! On Saturday afternoon we rode our bikes to Nature Park which is really only like 1 block away from our house, but we rode around a while and then had a picnic lunch. Nature Park is so pretty and we love that it is practically our back yard!
Darren had his bike sent down from Oregon and I got to get a new bike. Buying a new bike was sort of an early anniversary present. At least that is what we called it at the time we bought it because we aren't used to making big purchases. We thought if it was a present then we could justify it :)
We ate our lunch and I gave Darren his presents. For the first anniversary the traditional gift is paper. I feel like I have already done so many things for Darren with paper, like making books and stuff so I just made a frame with our wedding song written down on it with a picture of our hands in the middle. I also wrote him a card, which is paper, and talked about the first seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years I spent with him. I did this because the modern gift for the first anniversary is clocks and I wanted to get him a new watch. He has been wanting a new watch for a while so I told him he could pick one out.
We finished up our bike ride and picnic and then headed down to Idaho Falls to do some shopping. Darren found his new watch and he also got some new shirts and cologne. I also got to buy some new clothes. We kind of splurged on shopping so instead of going out to a nice restaurant like we had planned we came back home to Rexburg and rode our bikes to Costa Vida instead. We love that place so we didn't really mind not going out to eat at a fancier place.
On Sunday we went to church. Darren wore his wedding outfit and I wore a white dress :)
After church we came home and ate cake. We didn't save the top layer of our cake, instead we ate it the day after our wedding. We didn't want a good cake to get all nasty sitting in the freezer for a year- and who wants to eat year old cake anyway? So we bought a little cake and put a number 1 candle on it and made a wish for our new year together!
We did things a little backwards, because after cake we had dinner. I made Darren's favorite, parmesan chicken and we had a nice candle-lit dinner.
Darren and I want to start a tradition of taking a picture every anniversary so after all the years we will be married we will be able to look back on each year. We told Darren's dad about it and he said we will just watch ourselves get old and fat! It was funny... but hopefully the fat part won't happen :) My cousin, Carlee took some pictures for us. It was super windy outside so my hair is crazy in all of them. We really only got a few good ones because the sun was going down and it was super windy. But here they are!
It was a fun weekend and a fun year! I can't wait for more to come! Oh yeah, and Darren wrote me a 4 page letter about our first year together for the paper. He also got me a new bike and clothes. I don't know if the letter was supposed to be funny but it was hilarious. Our first year seriously has been a roller coaster. We have done so many fun things but also so many things have happened to us. It was fun to look back on the year and remember all of the sacrifices we have made to be together. Getting married young and in college sure isn't the easiest thing to do, like we are poor and live in a basement with spiders and have crappy used furniture, but we LOVE it. I really wouldn't have had it any other way. We love our life, smokey bed and all :) That's another story for another day.
