My Golden Year + Our One Year

It's been a crazy couple of weeks! It all started on March 22nd, we threw a party for my 24th birthday at the house. A lot of Mike's work friends and some of my girlfriends and their husbands came over and we fired up the grill, stuffed our faces, and played some beer pong! Somehow I only ended up with ONE picture and it was of the chalkboard I drew for the party...

I, uh, "borrowed" this quote and design idea from the blog Little Baby Garvin. I am obsessed!

Whoops! I have a pretty clear memory of taking more but they have yet to surface... and maybe that's not a bad thing.

The next day was spent watching movies and eating chili cheese fries on the couch (a.k.a. HUNGOVER) but it was a great day with the hubs all the same :)

On Monday we drove down to Wilmington to have a delicious lunch at the Front Street Brewery. After devouring my body weight in nachos and microbrews, we wanted to wander around on the riverwalk for a while but "sunny and 52" wasn't quite as warm as I was wishfully thinking expecting it would be so we were back in the car on the way home after about 15 minutes. 

Birthday selfies! One squinting directly into the sun, and a redo back in the car :)

Mike decided that he was going to completely spoil me this year and took leave for the whole week after my birthday! That decision may not have been entirely based on it being my birthday, but if you don't say it out loud then I can keep pretending ;) We had the best time sleeping in every day, going to the gym/running together, cooking dinner together, and just catching up on some much needed hubs & wife quality time :)

The Saturday after my birthday we headed down to Texas to work on some of our wedding plans and to take my dad to visit our wedding venue. It was even more beautiful that I remembered and once I could pull myself away from twirling around the gorgeous reception hall, we got a lot accomplished during a VERY short 2 1/2 day visit.

We flew home on Monday and got back into town around 10:30 so naturally we had the bright idea to wake up at 6:00 the next day and drive five hours to Charlotte for our wedding anniversary. Not sure if we'll be doing that kind of turn around again anytime soon, but it was so worth it! We got couples massages, had one of the BEST dinners ever at the Capitol Grille (free champagne & dessert, how can you go wrong?), and took a trip to Ikea to buy some furniture for the house! I can't think of a better way we could've celebrated our first year of marriage :)

Please excuse my TERRIBLE Iphone 4 camera... It's all we had.
This is how our table looked when we were seated!

So we ordered the creme brulee and got a baby cheesecake and chocolate espresso cake as a surprise!
Cue the food coma...

I blame Mike for letting his phone die. This is probably the worst picture of us EVER!
Either way, I love this guy! And he sure did look handsome ;)

All our loot we scored at Ikea!
I don't think we were even done shopping yet...

I was skipping down the aisles in pure BLISS!
Ikea is my new happy place :)

So now, all of our traveling as a couple will stop for a while but the craziness will continue... Mike checks into sniper school on Sunday night and from there it will be a couple months of SUPER early mornings, late nights, weeks in the field, and complete exhaustion. That's all I can really say about it for now, but once he gets started I'm sure I'll be able to share more about his experience.

While Mike is in school I get to take a couple solo vacations, one to visit my family in Colorado and then one to attend my sister Camille's college graduation in Hawaii! I'm a little anxious to leave the hubs for two weeks, but he recently discovered the "take-and-bake dinners" section at Sam's Club (including but not limited to.. buffalo chicken mac n cheese and stuffed peppers) so he assures me that he will be just fine ;)

Over the next couple months, life in the Beard house is going to turn upside down. We're anticipating a lot of changes and we also have a lot to look forward to! But for now it's business as usual, just taking it one day at a time :) And to my wonderful hubby:

Thanks for putting up with me for a whole year ;) I know it's only gonna keep getting better! I love you to the moon and back my sweet MB.