367 Days

My man is sometimes a better party planner than your man.

Not to rub it in or anything.

Our one-year anniversary was this last Sunday. We got away to the lake as fast as possible on Saturday and let our phones die. 

(Sidenote: As a general rule I'm horrible at answering emails and phone calls [just ask my wonderful in-laws :)], so if anyone out there has been trying to reach me by either of those means with little success, I'm sorry! I've started catching up on my emails today, and I'll be finishing up tomorrow.)

But back to my husband the party planner.

As part of our weekend away, Jared gave me the whole relaxation experience.

Saturday evening we ate steak and mashed potatoes (my favorite!) at a lovely little restaurant. 

Our waiter was a dapper young man with the driest sense of humor.

"Our raspberry jam is like duct tape. It will fix anything," he promised with a straight face.

"I don't like that guy," Jared whispered to me a minute later.

"That guy might be my favorite waiter to date," I whispered back. (Please appreciate the clever ambiguity there. Please!)

Sunday, Elder Quentin L. Cook was at our sacrament meeting!

Turns out he likes weekend getaways too.

Hearing apostolic words is always a treat.

In the afternoon we napped, painted (more on that in a post tomorrow), and watched a sage grouse waddle around for hours.

 You can't tell me you wouldn't watch that bird for hours. You would.

In an environmental science class I took in high school, we spent two whole weeks talking about the sage grouse and its mating call. I have to say, it was all it was hyped up to be. He made this low bubble pop sound in his throat while that white-and-red neck of his puffed out.

While Jared went off to paint, I watched the man grouse chase the lady grouses around for a solid two hours. Sad news: none of them so much as glanced in his direction. They all flew away. Maybe he had bad breath, but I was the only lady he won over that evening.

And then we took pictures because of Etsy.

Jared surprised me by cooking a delightful dinner! French dip sandwiches with delicious thin slices of steak on them (because I was in charge of grocery shopping and when I saw that he requested sliced roast beef I was like, "Hmmmm, steak.")

Our after-dinner exchanging of gifts was my favorite part of our anniversary. I got him a creepy Tim Burton movie (he loves them, the weirdy), some chapstick (his lips hurt real bad!), and a hand-written card. 

He gave me a shiny silver coin that he already owned himself and decided to give to me. Haha. To his credit, he said he was thinking I could punch a hole in it and turn it into a necklace. Very innovative, that one.

Ok, so we're not the giftiest people, but it really was my favorite part!

Then we let ourselves eat cake. 

One year old and covered in gold, the lemon-cream top tier of our wedding cake was surprisingly still delicious!

Our cake lady wrapped it up herself, and there was no frostbite to be found.

The original cake was a work of art. Man, we had a killer wedding.

The last hours of our anniversary were a little . . . unconventional. We watched Jared's new Tim Burton movie (9), felt really creeped out, and went to bed. Poor Jared was on the receiving end of a wee bit of my girly pouting at that point, but I'm the one who brought the movie and gave it to him, soooo I definitely brought that one on myself. It'll be a great memory, for sure!

Monday was golfing (we don't golf—it was hilarious) and reading and the beach and snowcones for dinner.

And it was a perfectly relaxing anniversary with my perfect giggly man.