Marriage Notes

We're officially moved out of our apartment. I'm so relieved, especially because I spent the last weekend in it with the stomach flu, sleeping in the bathroom and purging all kinds of nasty bodily fluids. Then cleaning so we would get our deposit back. Enter complete exhaustion.

We've been spending lots of time with our lifegroup lately, a group of other young, married, kid-less couples from our church and having great conversations about navigating through all things marriage.

As I was cleaning out some old piles of notes during the move, I found an activity Ben and I did together before we were engaged. We went through a book together called, "101 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged." Before I go any further, let me be the first to admit the cheesy-lameness of an activity book like this, but humor me.

In going through it question by question, answering each one no matter how redundant we thought it, we learned gobs about each other. Things we were SURE we discussed in enough detail (but really hadn't), explored baggage we never would've guessed we were toting, and dipped into things we hand't yet dealt with (like combining finances, views on kids, splitting family time, etc.)

Some notes, goofy doodles, and our answers to the questions in a journal from several years ago.

(haha)

I'll leave you with a card from our wedding, and some of the best marriage advice we've received to date:

"Keep your house clean, and your sex dirty."

Aspen Anniversary Weekend

I can hardly believe we're already past the year marker. It seems like last week that I was frantically throwing final details together and feeling like the day would never get here. But now that it's come and gone, I can look back and say that marriage has been a thousand times better than I ever dreamed it would be.

We celebrated with a long weekend in Aspen. It was a first time visit for both of us, so we went into it with no plans and no expectations. What resulted was a super relaxing yet adventures weekend, with hiking, fancy (and incredibly overpriced) meals, and hours of browsing in stores we will never make enough money to shop in.

Our favorite part of the trip by far was our hike of the Maroon Bells just outside of town. This is a gorgeous area, with Bell-shaped 14ers flanked by a lake, surrounded by rushing water and wildflowers (it's one of the "most photographed spots in Colorado"). We did a short hike around the lake, where we were in such awe of the view that it didn't seem real.

We finished the celebration back in Boulder, with a tradition we'll be partaking in until the end of time: free Slurpees on our anniversary (7-11).

When a torrential downpour started at 5:15 (just like it did before our outdoor 5:30 wedding last year), we just laughed. We did hear that a rainy wedding day was good luck!