one year

tomorrow, jamie and i will have been married for one year. it's pretty crazy to us that we've made it through that proverbial "first year of marriage." and so without further adieu, i present to you some of the best (and worst) of our first year:

1. our belated honeymoon to china. who cares that we didn't take a honeymoon right after our wedding? this trip was worth waiting for. jamie's team unexpectedly won the silver medal, and we had a blast touring beijing, xian, and shanghai.

2. our first married fight. not far into our marriage, we had our first fight as a married couple over a speaker system. yes, a speaker system. we bought nice surround sound speakers for the apartment, and i decided they were ugly after jamie had spent a bunch of time installing them. it's funny looking back on that fight now, but it wasn't at the time.

3. adopting hudson. we are so glad we added another dog to our family. his separation anxiety was a nightmare at first (we would have $1200 more in our adoption account if it weren't for hudson's 2 visits to the emergency vet), but we're happy to say that hudson is one of the 'best" parts of our first year.

4. buying a house. we won't close on our house until august, but we're proud to say that this year has ended with a wonderful house under contract with our name on it.

5. getting screwed by a furniture company. we paid $600 for a couch that we never got. we happened to be watching the news one night and saw that our furniture company had gone bankrupt and likely used the money we paid for our couch to pay off their debtors. we never got any compensation. that really sucked.

6. new friends. we like to tell the story of meeting our friends the burkholders in a mattress store. right before we got married, jamie and i went to buy a mattress. our now-friend jared just happened to be working that day, and we just happened to strike up a conversation about faith. we found out that jared and his wife, janelle, were new to the area. a week or two after our wedding, we had dinner with them at the village tavern. we've been friends ever since.

7. deciding to adopt. some people like to get through their first year before thinking about kids, but we just couldn't shake the desire to start a family and the calling to adopt. we've already been thinking of names for our little boy and hope to begin calling him by name when we decide on one. we hope by this time next year, we will be nearing the time to travel to ethiopia to bring him home.

8. miscellaneous. we've traveled a lot for rowing in this year -- to philadelphia (a lot); chicago; st. catherine's, ontario, canada. we shared the year with family in north carolina and ohio. we went skiing twice, played the wii a lot. we tried to cook, but also found a love for an italian market down the road from our apartment. we both completed two semesters of school and managed to make good grades. we experienced lots of life stages like graduations, weddings, birthdays, and the deaths of family members.

it has been a crazy, chaotic, blessed year. we are so glad we've lived it together.