1. Bowling

A few weeks ago a sweet friend gifted me a coupon book called The 2010 Entertainment Book, filled with coupons for services and entertainment in the Dallas area. We decided to use one of the 50% off coupons for a bowling alley nearby. It’s not really enough to write a full post about, but I wanted to share these pictures of That Husband with you because I think he is such a hottie.

Hot…

And this too short? (The upward angle doesn’t help.)

I can’t imagine sitting down in this one.

I’d never buy this, but short short short!

I mourn because I worry that this is the beginning of the end, and soon they will be yet another company who makes dresses that would almost work, but not quite. I feel like I’ve seen the same thing from Down East Basics as well (at least in the last catalog I received).  At least we have eShakti now! (Has anyone actually purchased from them yet? Still seems too good to be true.)

5. Embrace Life

Have you seen this commercial? Does it make you cry, or is that just pregnancy hormones? Found here.

6. Old Sweet Love is my Favorite Kind

Found here. I think That Husband will be just like this when we are older (in fact, I think this comes pretty close to describing us right now!)

“Elmer always takes my hand and leads me across the parking lot like I’m his girl and he’s taking care of me,” says Imogene.

“I take Imogene’s hand and help her walk because otherwise she’s liable to fall down,” says Elmer.

(Imogene & Elmer Edwards: married 55 years)

Winners of the Thank You Giveaways announced later today!

Today marks the first of what I know will be many wedding anniversaries for us. How do I know? Because we aren’t going to make it happen. We aren’t soul mates. We were never “meant to be”. We chose this, and we are going to continue to choose to make it work for the rest of our lives and beyond.

I’ve written a lot about our wedding, 29 posts to be exact. If you want a detailed summary of the entire experience visit my last post about the wedding experience and scroll down to see a list of links to all of my recap posts.

For this anniversary post I went through a few thousand photos (literally) and chose 5  that describe some of my favorite moments of the day.

I can remember the way I felt at our “first look” so clearly. The endowment ceremony and time together in the celestial room the day before had been so calming. Everything felt so right, and we couldn’t stop smiling at each other. I was so sure I wanted to be with him forever.

This was moments after we walked out of the temple as husband and wife. Right behind the camera stood a ring of our closest family and friends, clapping and cheering and waiting to come forward to hug us. We really did it! We were married!

I hadn’t placed a lot of importance on making sure we got a classic temple shot, but now I’m so glad we did. A year later and the scaffolding  on the spire doesn’t bother me at all. Pretty golden Moroni can still be seen and it’s truly what is inside that matters. Our sealing in the temple means absolutely everything to us. It gives us an eternal perspective when marriage is hard. It’s what will keep us from ever giving up.

The first dance was just one of the many my new husband showed me how much he cared about me, and what he was willing to do to make me happy. He took some lessons with me, practiced with me, and on our wedding day he got up and performed in front of everyone. One year later and he still continues to make sacrifices for me and for our marriage.

I think this photo describes the way we approached our marriage in the beginning. We jumped in head first, giving it everything we had and learning a few tough lessons along the way. I love my husband ten times more today than I did that night, and I expect that love to grow exponentially each year. When we welcome the baby into our lives next April we’re going to have to work even harder to keep our marriage strong, but I think we’re up for the challenge.

I chose him. He chose me. We’ll continue to choose each other, eternally.

When times are good (aka the economy isn’t in the toilet) TH’s company sends employees and significant others to an event called “the offsite”. This year? I didn’t go anywhere. Last year though? We were put on a plane to Mexico for several days of mingling and frolicking.

One night we slipped away after the dinner and dancing and spent some time chasing the waves down on the beach. On our way back up to the resort we saw this little cooked crab in the hot tub and proceeded to fish it out and carry it around. Now I realize it was all a bit morbid but we were a bit punch drunk and loved our little crab baby, carrying it around the resort with us showing it to our friends.

This trip was filled with many firsts in our relatinship. First time we had flown together, first “weekend away” (although we had separate hotel rooms, each sleeping with a boy and a girl who would eventually get married 6 months after us), and the first time we danced together. Neither of us are that great, although my outgoing nature helps make up for dancing skills I may be lacking.

It was also the first (and only) time I’ve been able to convince TH to swim with me.

A few weeks before our trip I started looking to see if there were any Puerto Vallarta photographers I could hire to take some engagement photos for us. I mentioned my plan to Kelli Nicole and she half-jokingly said “What if I flew out and did them for you?” This post is a bit more picture heavy than others because I love these photos so much. We were ridiculously in love, in a beautiful place and I think the way we were feeling shines through in the photos. This was also our last weekend together before we would be separated for another 10 weeks, only reuniting two days before the wedding.

Our impending separation, of course, had me expecting a proposal. He had no more options, barring an expensive surprise flight up to Washington, and so I just knew it was coming. I was finally going to have a ring on my finger.

We took photos for a few hours Saturday morning and then a few more hours that evening. Still no proposal. I went to bed thinking my Mexican proposal just wasn’t going to happen…

I’ve written up the proposal story once before, when it was a lot fresher in my mind. If you’ve forgotten how it happened, or if you’ve never read it before, go read my post detailing the whole story on That Bride.

We flew back to Dallas and a couple days later I boarded a plane home to Washington. The countdown began, we were ready to get married.

If meeting my parents and visiting my home made the list of significant events I think it only fitting that meeting his parents and seeing his home was included as well. Except he sent me to Europe all by myself to try to make a good impression on (and communicate with his Polish speaking) family. I can’t complain too much though about him not coming with because it’s where these images were taken by my mom, Denise Andersen, and I can’t imagine That Fiance would have been very excited about our 2 AM photo shoot in front of the Coliseum.

The trip was proposed (and paid for) by my wonderful parents who felt it was important for me to visit Poland before marrying someone who was so open-minded about moving to Europe, and maybe even Poland, eventually.

I had the chance to meet That SIL and her boyfriend (now fiance as they are getting married next Fall!) and had a great time with them. They’re really cute together and are always off on these fantastic adventures throughout Europe.

I had actually met TH’s parents once before, a year previous when they came to Utah for this graduation from BYU. TH and I weren’t dating yet so the meeting was just a few seconds, literally “hi” and “bye”, but they seemed nice and later TH confided to me that I made a good impression. Actually TH revealed that his mom told him “You two are going to start dating soon.” Good mothers intuition, don’t you think?

I was definitely nervous for this trip, but only because I wasn’t sure how I would communicate with my future MIL. She doesn’t speak English and I wanted to make a good impression on her and convey to her that I intended to treat her only son right and love him forever (cheesy I know, but true). Future FIL and SIL did a wonderful job translating between future MIL and myself and the visit went fabulously. His family has always done an amazing job of conveying how much they like me and wanted me to marry TH, which really means a lot. Now that we’re married and I’m blogging so transparently about my life and ieads each day, and will shortly begin raising their grandchildren in my very opinionated ways they might not be as sure, but what can ya do?

If you are wanting to read more about our trip to Rome and Poland you can find my daily summaries of our 12 day adventure here.

Several months of monthly visits passed and I was starting to get a bit impatient. I wanted to know where things were going and how quickly they were going to get there. The reason a brief visit on a random weekend in March made my list of significant events?

This was the weekend That Boyfriend sat down with me (actually I believe we were lying on my bed together, shhh, don’t tell the BYU Honor Code police!) and committed to a wedding in October. He fought for March at first, but I didn’t want to wait that long. I just wanted to be together. In the same state, same city, same house. For an LDS couple the only way to make that happen is to get married, and so this was the night we “got engaged”.

Of course, those of you who were reading Weddingbee when I was introduced know that it was months before he put a shiny diamond on my finger. I told him he could propose on his timeline, but he had to let me plan the wedding on mine (which meant starting immediately). I continued to refer to him as my boyfriend, moved down to Dallas to spend a few months being closer to him shortly after, and waited not-so-patiently for him to get around to officially proposing.

This relationship is definitely all about give and take. He made me wait over 4 months.