365 Days as a Mrs.

What a wonderful year it has been! I always dreamed of being married and starting a family with the man of my dreams but I never imagined it would be this wonderful. I am so grateful that I found someone who quite literally completes me. I cook, he washes dishes; he sweeps, I mop; I eat the cake, he eats the icing; he snores, I kick him; I whine, he laughs; I make the budget calendar, he pays the bills; I tell him my gas tank is empty, he fills it up; he orders steak and shrimp, I eat the shrimp; I make cookies/brownies, he inhales them; I pack his lunch every day, he eats it; and in the very rare event that we argue...I gripe, and he ignores me. It works out perfectly!  

One year down and forever to go! 

Photos by Cassie Duffle Photography. 

Now we shall celebrate our anniversary with a week long vacation! 

Groundbreaking Stuff Over Here

Literally, we have officially broke ground on our house! They are doing the plumbing and electrical this week, so we will hopefully see a slab when we return from vacation:

Jacob was less than amused when I told him to stand in his garage
*cough man cave cough* for a photo. 

We also received our anniversary painting way before the anticipated delivery date and, of course, I couldn't wait to open it! I could seriously stare at it all day...

Please ignore the poor photo quality--who knew it was so hard to take a
picture of a painting behind glass?

We were afraid the tropical storms headed towards the coast would ruin our vacation, but as of now (keep your fingers crossed) it looks like we will just have to contend with a few rainstorms. Speaking of vacation, does anyone know of a good Mexican restaurant on the River Walk for when we stay overnight in San Antonio? 

Finally, my very talented SIL took anniversary photos for us last weekend and I am so excited to share them with you soon; in the meantime, please enjoy this gem of a photo. In case you ever wonder why we don't have many pictures together, please refer back to this photo:

Jacob absolutely despises being in front of the camera, but a few times a year
he will appease me and take pictures--he must really love me! 

Also, is it sad that my most glamorous look (that I spent like an hour to achieve) is how a lot of women look on the daily? 

Seriously though, ain't nobody got time to look like this by 6:30 every morning! 

Now if you'll excuse me, I must resume reciting my mantra for the week: "only 3 1/2 days until vacation...only 3 1/2 days until vacation..." 

Slippery Yoga Mats & Sunsets on the Beach

I might have lost my mind last week; I randomly decided on Friday that I wanted to do a workout class the next day (Saturday) to kick-start myself into working out on a more regular basis. I've never minded working out--in fact, I used to work out every morning before work back when I had a 9-5, but now I have a 7-4 and there is just no way that's going to happen! Then, by the time I get home from work, I'm just over the day and nothing sounds better than curling up on the couch with my Apple TV remote...so as you can guess, workouts don't happen often.

I have a drawer full of workout DVDs--mostly Jillian Michaels because she's amazing but I wanted more this time, so I started researching! I finally found something that intrigued me...(if you follow me on Instagram you already know what class I picked)...hot yoga. Aside from the few times I have used my Beginners Yoga DVD and the one time I used my Yoga Meltdown DVD, I had never done yoga before. I coerced (read: suckered) my SIL into joining me in the class and we signed up! The first class was free, so what did we have to lose (other than our pride, perhaps)? The fear didn't set in until around 10:00 on Friday night and I started wondering if I would survive. I woke up on Saturday morning and excitedly got ready for class:

I am proud to say not only did I survive that hot yoga class, I actually enjoyed it! I might possibly have been the least flexible person in the class, but it was fun! You read that right, the girl who hates to sweat actually enjoyed slipping around on her yoga mat drenched in sweat! It was such an accomplishment to see what my body could do/can do. I might possibly be in love with yoga now! So, yogis (sp?), what DVDs, websites, YouTube channels do you recommend I start using to practice yoga? 

After such a great weekend, it was an epic struggle to get out of bed for work on Monday but I'm so glad I did get up because otherwise I would have missed this beautiful sunrise...

So breathtaking! One perk of leaving for work at 6:25 in the morning! 

I have been obsessively checking the weather for our vacation next week (and counting down the work days: 7, in case you were curious)! Right now, it's looking like pretty good weather for most of the week; however, being from Oklahoma, I know that weather forecasters are about as accurate as my "guess how many marbles are in the jar" estimates (read: not at all). 

And last random thought of the day, Jacob and I have debated about what to do for gifts on our 1 year anniversary (August 29th) and finally made a decision! I kind of wanted to do the traditional anniversary gifts (paper this year) and he just wanted a present but had no earthly idea what he wanted (pickiest person ever). Since we are building a house, I didn't want to throw a lot of money at gifts for each other when there wasn't anything we really wanted, and since he vetoed homemade gifts (a suggestion I made in jest), we decided on a joint gift. 

via

I thought a painting would be nice (especially since we will have a new house soon) and when I found this one, I knew it was the one! If you recall, we got married in Folly Beach, so what better for our first anniversary than a PAPER print of a beach sunset named after the place we were married one year ago?! Now if only we had decided on this sooner so we could have actually had it by our anniversary...as it stands now, we won't get it until September 9th (sigh). You just can win at everything...

Only 2 1/2 more work days until the weekend!