Team Abbott: One Year Down and a Look Back...

Today is our one year anniversary. It’s surprising and marvelous every time I think about it. I can’t believe that this first momentous year has come and gone, slipping by moment by moment. We had a wonderful weekend celebrating, a detailed post that will have to wait. As a brief preview though, we had the best time ever. We always have fun together and love traveling together, but everything about our weekend went so smoothly and was filled to the brim and overflowing with joy and peace. I am seriously the luckiest girl in the world. To have such a husband as Mark, it takes my breath away! Now, after the conclusion of our blissful weekend, we have the rest of our lives and forever to look forward to. Sure, not every moment will be as joyful and peaceful as the past few days have been, but we'll be together. We’ll go through all the regular ups and downs of life that no one can avoid. There will be moments of pain and stress and disappointment, but with those and through those will come the moments of happiness and relief and celebration. I can’t even tell you how stoked I am to continue on this journey with Mark. We’re working each day at being better teammates and friends. He is my bestest friend, my confidant, my listening ear, my defender, my love. Wahoo for forever!!

For any readers who made it through the mushy stuff, good work. I'll try to keep the rest of this post "mushy-less." We'll see how it goes though. As part of our anniversary celebration (and due to the fact that I am still ridiculously behind on my blogging escapades), I wanted to take a look back at the last year by month, starting right after getting married (just the stuff I haven't blogged about yet.) It's been a crazy ride! So with that said... we'll start with the month of May 2009 (with just a quick insert for the very end of April).

End of April 2009

Mark and I were married on Saturday, April 25, 2009. Two days later, we drove all of our wedding presents, wedding memorabilia (i.e. my dress), some donated furniture, and most of my storage bins that had been in my parents shed since high school graduation (I’m not even going to embarrass myself by telling how many we had… let’s just say that it was a lot, and we left at least 5 more there that we just have no room for in our small apartment). We had to rent a Budget truck to fit all of that stuff, which was really quite difficult. If you haven’t ever driven one, they’re hard to get used to at first. And since it became more pricey with each additional driver, poor Mark ended up driving the whole way (yes, that’s about 13 hours behind the steering wheel of a truck that rocks and reels with each gust of wind or large truck passing). I just remember that the sound of the truck was loud while we were driving and our seats were much farther apart than a normal car, so conversation was trickier than usual. We kept up good spirits though.

We ended up not getting home until late that evening, and since we hadn’t been sure when we would get home, we hadn’t gotten anyone to help us unload at that time of night. We live in a fairly good neighborhood, but not somewhere you want to leave a good portion of your earthly belongings outside on the street, across from a jiving 7-Eleven. So, we slowly but surely hauled in all of our loot. It took us forever and we were so stinkin’ tired. Then came the dreaded tv stand that my parents had originally given Ashley and Dave, and they had kindly given to us when they moved for the summer. We absolutely love it, but I to this day have no idea how we lifted that thing up the stairs to our apartment. It is by far the heaviest thing we own, and of course it was at the very back of the truck so we were already tired out. I just remember moving a few steps between rests and literally thinking that we were going to lose it a few times while we were going up the stairs. We had to take them one by one, lifting up the base just the few inches needed for the next step and setting it down to rest and readjust. I’m just grateful we didn’t get hurt in the process. I’m not sure what we’ll do when we eventually move, but I just know that Mark and I are not carrying it by ourselves in the middle of the night again.

May 2009

After relaxing for a day, I had to go back to work on Wednesday (dang PTO) and work for those three days. After that, we were free and clear for our official honeymoon! We drove down to So Cal and spent the weekend at Mark’s parents’ house. Then on Monday we boarded our cruise! I had never been on a cruise before and was so excited to try it out. We ended up having such a blast. Definitely to be repeated. Unfortunately, the one week we did go happened to coincide with the feared swine flu epidemic, so the original plan to set port on Mexico for a day was canceled, we just spent another day on the boat, and received some money to spend on board. For this cruise, we weren’t too sad about the change because we were more excited to just be together and to have the cruise experience. In the future though, we want to go on cruises with fabulous destinations. And answer me this, how come the same week our cruise port was canceled, my sister/brother-in-law Heidi and Seth’s cruise was moved from Mexico to Jamaica and some other fabulous destination and extended from only 5 days to 7 days? Seems like we may have gotten the short end of the swine flu stick, but we still had such a blast that it didn’t even matter.

So excited to board the boat…

Umm, what in the world am I supposed to do with this thing?

Ahh, that’s what you’re supposed to do…

All safe and sound and ready to set sail!

Bon voyage!

We did get to depart on Catalina Island and took a glass bottom boat tour.

We ate an amazing amount of food on the cruise. Each night for dinner, we would order four appetizers, three entrees, and two desserts to share between the two of us. We just wanted to try everything. I became way too used to eating constantly and when I wasn’t really hungry… I think I had hunger pains for the next few days after the cruise when I started eating like a normal person again.

Strawberry soup, one of our favorite appetizers:

Getting ready to eat again…

And this is just the entrees...

And then for our customary dessert, molten chocolate deliciousness and pineapple yogurt.

I just don’t know what to eat first…

When not eating, we chilled on the boat, playing cards sometimes. We often ended up tanning on deck while reading and one day went crazy on the water slides.

We played some mini golf.

Every night we went to the cheesy awesome shows, even though that part of the boat made me feel a bit more seasick than usual.

And we enjoyed our cramped little bedroom, complete with an ocean view and a menagerie of animal towels.

We were sad to leave the boat, but are looking forward to more cruises in the future. We had fun taking pictures after departing and before getting picked up, especially me because I was tired from waking up so early and was crazily singing songs.

We had just enough time to re-coop before our California reception on Saturday, May 9^th. We were able to hold the party at Abby and Papa’s house, which turned out gorgeously. Many many thanks for those who helped with setup and take down and made this such a great day for us! Abby had made the yummiest food, with Aunt Lynnie’s recipes and guidance. Papa had done some fabulous things around the house and yard, including retiling some of the pool tiles. I don’t have any pictures of the reception on my camera, but they are on facebook for those who want to see them. We do have a few pictures of family time that I do love.