How we Celebrated...

We decided to celebrate the big one year with events throughout the weekend. In a perfect world, we would have gone to the beach. We wanted to go so bad! I tried my hardest to get caught up on school work but it just wasn't happening. Boo. Staying in Bham was probably best though. Because I don't necessarily love going out to eat nice dinners on week nights, I requested we do a celebratory dinner Friday night (I know technically that is a week night but I consider that a weekend night). To me, a nice dinner means good food and conversation, not feeling completely beat from a long day of dealing with complaining families. Those are margarita nights. We both decided on Bottega since neither of us had ever been. It was a delicious meal and a good time to spent reminiscing about our year of marriage.

Saturday was a gorgeous day! We spent the morning doing house and yard work then Grant and Caroline came over for a mini crawfish boil. Grant has been harassing asking us if we could throw one together this spring and we figured it would be the nice thing to do since he's about to be tied down to midnight feedings and stinky diapers.

Saturday was what I like to call "Kyle Whittington Day." For a day to be considered "Kyle Whittington Day" it must be a bright, sunny, cool day. Preferably on a "Kyle Whittington Day" Kyle Whittington likes to be outside (of course) doing one of the following activities: watching football, fishing, hunting, drinking a cool beverage, boiling crawfish/smoking ribs, or doing yard work. He's a simple man.

        Caroline only eats the sides and the occasional piece of crawfish meat I pick for her.

                       Come and get it!

It doesn't get better than this group shot using the self timer in front of our feast.

Actually, it does. Kyle put the t.v. outside so we could watch basketball. Sweet.

I also made this delicious appetizer called rotel cups I found on pinterest. They were delicious! I decided to take a picture 2 minutes after I brought out the tray. I will definitely be making this easy appetizer again. Here's the link to the recipe.

On Monday we celebrated on our actual anniversary by eating the top of our cake and exchanging gifts. We both thought our cake was delicious and looked pretty good for being in the freezer for one year. I wasn't sure what type of cake I had chosen for the top b/c I had different flavors for each of my 6 tiers. I was pretty pumped that I had chosen coconut with butter-cream icing for the top. O my word. It was amazing!!! I had two pieces. I justified that by saying that the only piece of my wedding cake I had the entire wedding was the piece Kyle fed to me for pictures. Makes sense right?

We also did a small toast using the champagne glasses Kyle's parents gave us for the wedding.

         Fancy

The last piece of cake was eaten by yours truly on Saturday. I am in mourning.

Next up, gifts. Kyle was pretty creative and got me two gifts. The first gift symbolized the traditional wedding gift of paper and was a children's book I discovered a couple of months back called Dick Whittington Finds a Cat. It's a Caldecott Medal book. We both thought it was cool that it had our name in it. The second gift symbolized the contemporary wedding gift of a clock. Kyle got me a mantle clock. I was really surprised! The neat thing about this clock is that it has a chime called the Whittington chime. Yeah, I'm not making that up. Check out the info here.

I had the brilliant idea of getting Kyle a wind chime. Kyle always talks about how much he likes his parent's wind chimes so I thought that would be a cool 1st anniversary gift. Also, I'll admit the cheesy side of me thought it would be a nice reminder of our 1st year together as a married couple when we heard the chimes. Awww. I lucked out and found wind chimes called anniversary chimes. Special.

 We've got all kinds of new sounds in our house.

Now that we have the first year behind us, we are focusing on the second. This past Sunday we officially became members of Dawson Memorial Baptist Church here in Homewood. We are both excited about our decision. We have been attending there now for a couple of years and wanted to join as a married couple once we found a Sunday School class we liked. Kyle has also decided to join the church and officially become Baptist by getting baptized. I am so proud of him for making a public commitment of faith by being baptized. It makes my heart swell. Kyle hasn't chosen a baptism date yet but I'll keep all of you posted.