Stacey made a pretty awesome cake for the event.  There were tons of people there and little Abby seemed to have a pretty good time being the center of attention.

Later that evening – several of our friends came over to help this guy -

…ring in his 30s.  Let me be the first to say, I am SO glad that Danny is finally 30.  It makes me feel much less like a “cougar” now that my husband is no longer in his 20s.

He requested a cookie cake for the occasion, and, who am I to deny the birthday boy his one request?

I requested a dinosaur for his cookie cake – but, it turned out looking more like a green snake with legs.  Oh well.

Our party was pretty low key – until Lisa and Brandon’s boys discovered Gracie’s crate.  Who says that we don’t know how to throw a raging party?

Gracie’s present to Danny was hopping on the sofa with him this afternoon and letting him give her a belly rub.  This was actually a very sweet present as she hardly EVER lets us cuddle with her.

Tonight we finished Danny’s birthday celebration with dinner at my parents house.  As per usual, we were stuffed with all kinds of food.  My mom operates under the assumption that Danny is malnourished, so, whenever we come over for dinner she pretty much heaps pile upon pile of food on his plate.

All in all, it was a pretty nice long weekend.  It is time to buckle up and get ready for September, it is going to be a busy month!

1. My husband
2. My dog
3. College Basketball (esp. during tournament weekends)
4. Vacations
5. College Football season

And, today my friends, marks the beginning of college football season?  Who is pumped?

This girl is SUPER pumped!

Gracie, on the other hand, is NOT pumped.  She does not like how “animated” I get during games.

Duke plays tonight at 7pm.   My dad is actually going to the game tonight – but, I decided to sit this one out for a whole bunch of reasons (blah blah blah – right now I am totally wishing I had sucked it up and made the trip).  I have a few games circled on my calendar in October and November that I want to attend though.

This brings me to the dork box.  What is the dork box?  Well, it is a very tiny computer that we have hooked up to our television.

At first I was adamantly opposed to getting this.  It just seemed like a bit much to me – having a computer hooked up to the television.  Danny mostly wanted to get it to stream movies from Netflix, but, I was not wild about the idea.  At that point, my sneaky husband said, “Well, you know, if we got one, you could log-in to ESPN and watch the games that they are showing online only on the tv.”

I considered this for a moment and then decided that maybe getting a dork box would be ok after all.   The Duke game tonight is being broadcast only via the internet – so, it seems like this thing might come in handy after all (not to mention that Danny was right, it is super convenient being able to stream Netflix movies).

In honor of football season – I told Danny that I wanted to have my own little tailgate party tonight before the game kicks off.  Naturally, he suggested that we pick up carry out from Flaming Amy’s.

I explained to him that in my 25+ years of tailgating before games I have NEVER eaten a burrito.  However, he was all excited about his idea – so, I obliged.  I still think he’s a weird-o though.

And now, it is time for kick off!  If anyone needs me on Saturdays for the next 2-3 months, just check the house.  I will probably be planted in front of the television using the dork box.

And I got a really nice one at that.  Thank you Bed, Bath and Beyond for your 20% off mailings.  And, thank you all of the wonderful guests at my wedding soiree last year who gave me gift cards that I saved.  This baby only cost me $20 once it was all said and done.

After all that fun – Danny and I went to try out a new dessert place.

A little backstory on this – for the past year, I have been going on and on and on about how I wished that Wilmington had a place to get frozen yogurt.  A little over three months ago, I declared that if one did not open soon, I was going to open one myself.  Just so I could hang out and eat fro-yo all the time.  Clearly, I have issues

Fastforward to the other day – my friend Julie was telling us about this new place that was “awesome” and it had frozen yogurt and “every topping imaginable.”  Danny then was like (and this is paraphrased), “Oh yea, I have seen that place – it is over in that shopping center where I eat lunch at a lot.”  It seems that my husband knew that a frozen yogurt store had opened in town and FORGOT TO MENTION IT TO ME!  The horror.

Tonight I finally got my long awaited frozen yogurt.  That cup has a mixture of red velvet and vanilla with tons of toppings.  I think that perhaps I built it up a little bit too much in my head.  It was good (next time I will add more waffle cone bits) – but, not the life changing experience I had imagined it would be.  That’s alright though – it was a nice way to start my long weekend.

This weekend, though, we pulled out the big guns.  On Friday night, we headed down to my favorite eating establishment in all of Wilmington, The Little Dipper.  As much as I love fondue, it is very much a “special occasion” only type place.  We went all out with the cheese/salads/entree/dessert.  I LOVE the fondue dessert.  I told Danny as we were eating that if I was only allowed to eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would be those marshmallows dipped in chocolate.  Heaven.

I do not have any pictures of the aforementioned meal because as I was grabbing the D300 on our way out, Danny kind of gave me an, “are you kidding me?” look.  So, I left the camera at home.  Just as well – it gave us a chance to really hang out and decompress some.  Very nice.

Our waitress was nice enough to box up our leftover dessert to bring home. 

As you can see, there is not a marshmallow to be found in that container.  I managed to eat every last one of them all by myself.  In fact, I am so obsessed with that dessert that I bought MORE marshmallows at the grocery store today, just to enjoy with our leftover dessert tonight.  Clearly, I have a problem.

On our actual anniversary (Saturday), I pulled out the big guns.  Since we got engaged last year in Chicago, I figured it was only fitting to have an authentic deep dish Chicago style pizza shipped in from The Windy City.

This was shipped with dry ice to keep everything fresh in transit.  The package included a couple of Cubs freezer glasses.  Even though I am currently kind of pissed at the Cubs organization (they traded away all of my favorite players and have generally been even more disappointing than usual this season), I figured it was a nice touch.  We DID get engaged in front of Wrigley Field, after all. Originally, the pizza was supposed to be a surprise for Danny.  But, last week he was (obviously) bummed out about things, and, in a weak moment I found myself telling him about the special delivery that was coming.  To say that he was excited would be an understatement.  All week he kept calling me at work asking, “Have you heard anything about the pizza?  Has it shipped yet?  When is it coming?”  And, on Friday, he called me at roughly 9AM at work asking if it had arrived yet.  What can I say?  That boy loves his pizza.

The verdict on this?  It held up really well.  Obviously, it was not as good as being in Chicago – but, it was still really good.

I did, however, learn a very important lesson about the portion control when it comes to this stuff.  One slice of Chicago style pizza = a perfect portion.  1.5 slices = total food hangover.  I swear the cheese and dough on that sucker must have just kept expanding in my stomach because I felt like I was going to pop afterwards. 

Sadly, now the weekend has come to a close.  Our month of September is going to be really busy – I better go rest up some!  Monday will be here before I know it.

There have been so many times this week that we have looked at each other and said, “I can’t believe it has almost been a year – SO much has happened since then.”  And it is true – last year feels like it was a different lifetime ago.

Honestly, if I could go back and do it all over again – I wouldn’t change a thing.  At the time, I chose to do a very small, intimate wedding ceremony because I did not want a big “production.”  I do not like being the center of attention and I knew that if we decided to do a big wedding, I would wind up a stressed out mess (this did eventually happen when planning got underway for the celebration soiree in November).  But, my goal was to avoid all of that and be able to enjoy my wedding day.  Mission accomplished.

At the time, we did not know that Danny’s dad was sick.  Looking back at the pictures from our soiree in November, now we can tell that he did not look well.  But, at the time, we had no idea.  With everything that happened last week, we are just so thankful that we decided to go ahead and have a short engagement and small wedding and have his dad with us for that time.

The song that we did our “first dance” to at soiree in November was “Better Than Love” by Griffin House.  The reason that we chose this song was because of the line, “You got my back when I need help.”

There are about a million reasons why I am thankful to have met Danny and gotten married. But, I think that one of the greatest things about our relationship (and marriage) is having someone in my life that, no matter what, I know will always have my back.

Without going into all of the details – about 5 months ago he was given a pretty grim diagnosis.  His condition had gotten worse over this past month and, even though we all knew that this time was coming, it happened a little bit sooner than expected.  Dealing with the death of a parent or loved one is never an easy thing (no matter if it is expected or not).

Danny was in California when his father was hospitalized.  He had wanted to cancel is trip, but, his father insisted that he go.  Thankfully, Danny was able to make it back on Friday and spend some time with his dad before he passed away.  He was laid to rest this past Friday morning and Danny gave a very moving tribute to his father that pretty much had everyone in attendance sobbing uncontrollably by the time it was over.

Danny said that someone at work told him today that dealing with a parents death never really got “easier” it just started to seem more “normal” after some time passes.  I think that probably sums it up perfectly. 

One of my favorite musicians, Will Hoge, was playing downtown at The Soapbox and so I scooped up my friend Lori and off we went.  There are not many things that can get me out of the house that late on a school night – but, the promise of good live music will do it every time.

As expected, it was a great show.  Of all of my favorite singer/songwriters, Will is the only one who consistently keeps coming back to Southeastern NC.  He never draws a very big crowd (which is unfortunate because he’s awesome), but, I totally appreciate his willingness to keep coming back.  I very much like being able to make a 10 minute drive downtown to see a show instead of 2 hours to Raleigh or Chapel Hill.

It was WAY past my bedtime when I made it home..

…and I was a wreck at work today. I finally packed up my stuff and left the office around 4 this afternoon.  That means I had to bring some stuff home with me to work on over the weekend – which sucks, but, at least I get to work in my pajamas, which is always more appealing than the alternative.

Once home from work, I scooped my number one homegirl…

…and proceeded to face plant on the sofa for about an hour. 

Danny gets home tonight – and that makes me a very happy girl.  There is some heavy stuff he has to deal with once he gets home, but, I am just super excited that he will be back in the same time zone! 

Off to scounge up something for dinner and continue being lazy.

When I got back from the bike ride, I immediately showered and put my pajamas on….at 4pm.  That is totally normal, right?

In preparation for this week, I have been diligently been DVR’ing all kinds reality programs and what not for some mindless entertainment.  I also Netflix’d the first season of Mad Men, which, I have heard nothing but great things about.  It is nice to hang out and do nothing – but, honestly, I seem to have become rather co-dependent in my old age and I would gladly give up the bad reality television to have my husband home.

I am toying with the idea of changing the look of my blog around a bit.  My original plan was to create my own wordpress theme…but, then I found a theme that I like and it seems fairly customizable.  Perhaps I will work on that some this week. 

But, for now, I have a date with my dog and television.  The weekend is nearly over – but, I hope that I can enjoy a few more hours before the work week starts.

42 minutes and 7.10 miles later I returned home.  While this is not the farthest that I have done on the bike – it was my farthest solo ride to date.  It was also somewhere around 103 degrees outside today – so, to say that I was a hot sweaty mess afterwards would be a bit of an understatement.

Gracie was NOT pleased with me for leaving her home alone.  After she spent a minute licking my gross, sweaty legs she had a bit of a barking fit and demanded that I take her into the back yard to play.

Does anyone else’s dog make them feel like a huge asshole for leaving them to squeeze in some exercise?  Because mine has mastered the fine art of guilt tripping.

I will be the first to admit that I have kind of half-assed the whole blogging thing.  Some weeks I do well with posting – and then other times, weeks go by and I do not update at all.  I don’t really have an excuse – I will probably never be an “everyday” type blogger, but, I would like to become one who consistently blogs 4-5 times a week.  We’ll see how that goes this year.

My original purpose in starting this was to have an outlet/journal to record the month(s) leading up to my wedding/post-wedding reception/home buying/etc.  Last year was pretty busy and this year has absolutely flown by (how can it already be August again?!).

I wish I had a nifty picture or something to end this post on, but, alas, I have been bad about keeping my camera with me this week.  I have a new lens on the way though – so, maybe that will give me some motivation to get out and shoot more. 

Here’s to another year of blogging (and perhaps this time more consistently)!