first anniversary

Sunday, the 24th, was our first anniversary! I really can't believe it has been a year already since we got married. The time has flown by!

To celebrate, we went out to dinner on Saturday night at the Pear Tree (which is a FANTASTIC restaurant about half an hour from Kirksville). We got all dressed up and had a really nice time.

On Sunday, Thomas had all kinds of surprises in store for me. He complains that it is hard to surprise me, but he did an amazing job of it! In the morning, he made me breakfast and surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of purple and white flowers (our wedding colors). It included roses, lisianthus, and carnations because, as he explained, roses represent love, we had lisianthus at our wedding, and carnations are the traditional first anniversary flower. Sometimes I wonder how I found such an amazing guy!

He had also prepared a scavenger hunt for me, which took me all around town to important places like where we got married, where we had our first kiss, our first apartment, etc. At every stop he had left the next clue with a flower, so I also ended up with another bouquet! The last clue led me out to Rainbow Basin where he was waiting with a picnic lunch, which included sandwiches, watermelon, raspberry lemonade, and my favorite ice cream. It was such a wonderful surprise, and I had a ton of fun going on the scavenger hunt. He is too cute!

We spent the afternoon at a high school graduation party for some family friends, and I thought we were done with the anniversary part of the day....but I was wrong! When we left the party, he acted like we were going home but then kept driving past our street. I was at first confused, but then thought we were probably going stargazing or something. Wrong again! Thomas had reserved us the same hotel room we stayed in on our wedding night last year. It is such a great room, complete with jacuzzi and big screen HD TV. Last year, we got there so late and were so exhausted and had to get up the next morning to rush off to our wedding brunch. We were kind of bummed we didn't have time to appreciate it at all, so he decided to give us another night there. I couldn't have been more surprised! We had the best time.

But lest you should think that he didn't get anything out of this anniversary, I gave him a collection of zombie movies and literature, which, while not the most romantic gift, is exactly what he wanted. (For those of you who don't know...Thomas has quite an interest in zombies and has developed various contingency plans for how to survive the "zombocalypse.") It included the new novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, "the classic regency romance...now with ultraviolent zombie mayhem!"...basically a combination of our interests. :) Pretty silly, but you should have seen the look on his face when he opened it!

I couldn't have asked for a better anniversary! Thomas spoils me so much! :) We have had a great first year of marriage, and I am looking forward to many more with him!

summer lovin'

School finally ended 2 weeks ago, and we couldn't be happier about it! We had a couple of very hectic weeks before it was over, with all of our major papers due plus grading all our students' research papers. But we made it through...and both with 4.0s, so we are pretty pleased about that!

Thomas went to yet another conference the weekend before finals week. He stayed with some of his family friends and had a great time going to all the different presentations. He also got to spend time with his aunt and cousins and my brother Matt (and got thoroughly beaten at Smash Brothers).

Since school has finished, we haven't really done anything, and it has been wonderful! We still get paid from Truman for our assistantships at the end of May, so we decided to take some time off before working this summer. I can't remember the last time that I didn't have school OR work, so it's pretty exciting. We have been spending a lot of time reading, catching up on Lost, and spending a lot of time outdoors because the weather was so nice (but it is starting to get too hot..bleh). It has been fantastic!

A little over a week ago, a tornado hit Kirksville, which fortunately didn't affect us or any of our family members, but it hit just about a mile from my parent's house, so we are very fortunate that it wasn't any further south! It hit a car dealership and a lot of houses on the north end of town. We went to check out the damage, and it was pretty intense. I'd never seen that kind of damage in real life before.

This Sunday is our 1st anniversary! I can't believe that it has already been a whole year! We are going to the Pear Tree tomorrow night to celebrate, and I'm not sure what we're doing on our anniversary itself, but I believe Thomas has some secret plan cooked up... I'm pretty excited. He is such a good husband! I am lucky to have him :)