Anniversary Date

Ok, I know I'm late on this, but I think I would be lame if I didn't have some kind of record of our amazing 1st anniversary date!
As I mentioned before, Richard gave me my anniversary present early - the photo shoot. (I'll be including the pictures from that in my next post). But the joy continued into Saturday, the 22nd of August (our official 1 year anniversary)

We decided that sleep was important to us that day, so we indulged ourselves in sleeping in until 11 or 12. It was beautiful. I served Breakfast in bed to Richard - a yummy french toast casserole, and then gave him my present that I'd been working on for a long time... A hard copy of his mission emails, and then a separate book with the emails that we sent to each other on his mission. Not to brag or anything, but it was amazing! I am not gonna lie, I'm really proud of that present, it was a lot of work! And it paid off. We had fun reading the letters in both books, and I know we will enjoy looking back at those in the future, and I hope our children will too.

For our date, Richard wouldn't tell me what we were going to do (if you haven't noticed by now, he takes great joy in surprising me and dragging out the suspense...I love it!). Eventually, we ended up in Santa Barbara (beautiful!) and we spent the rest of the day there.
We first went to the Santa Barbara Catholic Mission - it has been there for over 200 years! It was so old, but very cool!
then we went to State Street - basically the place to hang out. It was fun, its just a huge outdoor mall, with great restaurants and stores. I LOVED it! And Richard actually admitted that he kind of LIKED going shopping there. If that doesn't say something about how amazing it was, I don't know what does. :) After looking at the fun stores there, we went to a yummy Italian restaurant. We had AMAZING pasta, and a delectably delicious dessert. If you have ever had flourless chocolate cake, you know where I'm coming from when I say it was TO DIE FOR!
Then, we walked down to the beach and rented a surrey, and rode around all the beachside paths. I think that was my FAVORITE part of the date. probably because of the creativity and uniqueness of that idea. It was so fun.
After that, it was late, so we went home. Richard told me on the way home that we could watch a chick flick if I wanted, so I was all over that. I was so excited! When we got home, he sat me down and told me to just relax while he got the computer all set up. Then, all of the sudden, the music came on, and pictures started popping up, and I realized that my love had put together the sweetest slide show of our past year together (during his very limited free time). I was so impressed and felt so loved and special. It meant a lot to me that he was willing to sacrifice his free time to do something that would make me so happy.
I'm so grateful for such a fun, loving, unselfish, thoughtful, funny, creative husband!