Our 1st Anniversary - Part 1

This is going to be a long blog, so it is coming to you in two parts... and I guarantee that it won't take me a month to add the rest of the blog!

It's hard to believe that we have already been married a year. In this year we have experienced buying our first home, Brett having surgery, each of us getting a new job, the passing of my grandmother, our first holiday season including our first trip to Kansas and traveling to see our families on Christmas day, training our darling puppy, settling into a new church, developing a budget and learning to pay lots of bills, learning to file our taxes (let's get off of the money topic), we're experiencing being an Aunt and Uncle to precious Hannah, my sister and brother-in-law moved to Hong Kong this year, and we're taking up recreational biking. Also we've learned lots about auto care, landscaping and home maintenance, cooking/baking.... this isn't even half of everything!

Even more important, we have learned to cherish the blessings of our families and making the most of the time and conversations that we have with them.

So what have Brett and I learned about each other? I'm not going to write about that... but I will include the fact that we have never laughed harder or loved each other stronger than we do now! We are so thankful that we have each other.

Ok, now I'll get to the pictures! One year after the Big Day and looking better than ever!

Time for the cake! We thawed out the top layer of our wedding cake, and surprisingly - it tasted really good! Since it was frozen from the night of Sept. 2nd last year until the end of August this year, it didn't really have a chance to get stale or old. We ate on this for the next week!

Why two cakes? There is a little known story about the fact that when choosing our wedding cake, each of us chose what we wanted as the cake and filling for 2 of the 4 layers. Brett wanted yellow cake with almond nut filling and I chose chocolate cake with almond nut cream filling. Simple right? Well, when we woke up our first morning, I decided it was time for cake since we had a "to - go" box filled with small pieces of the two layers of cake. To my surprise the chocolate layers were filled with a chocolate ganache.... not almond nut cream. I had asked a simple request... basically the most simple choices that we could have made chocolate and vanilla with almond nut cream. The lady that made the cake even suggested fruit fillings, but simple was what we wanted and what we enjoy the most.

Ok, so the top layer of our wedding cake was the vanilla with almond nut cream. As part of my anniversary gift, Brett had a co-worker make a square top layer to replace the combination that I wanted for the wedding cake. He surprised me with a beautiful and quite tasty chocolate cake with almond filling. Awwww.... I know, how thoughtful! It really meant a lot to me! He even asked her to add the C on top.

After lots of planning we booked a weekend at the Umstead Hotel in Cary, NC for a really great deal. It is located only a mile from a busy interstate, but is nestled between numerous beautiful trees and around a large pond. It's a very serene setting!

Below is the back side of the hotel. On the first level you can see the nice tables and umbrellas with many flowers and plants surrounding every aspect of the hotel. Note the absolutely perfect blue sky!

The hotel was decorated with beautiful artwork including many paintings and sculptures. Each one was hand picked by the lady who owns this hotel. The owner also has a great eye for design as she picked every color and texture found in the building. Below is one of the most elaborate sculptures. This piece costed over 1/4 million dollars.

Picture of the fireplace on the patio.

Below is the view of the large pond. A nature trail and .3 mile path goes around the water. We took a romantic stroll around the pond shortly after we checked into our room.

(to be continued)