Anniversary pics & hard wood floors (oh joy!)

Hola friends.  I am here.  Online and blogging.  The countdown is on in my life as my volunteer commitments start to end and my life is officially "simplified".  I'm very excited. 

But onto my lack of posting.  I have a reason.  I promise.  For my anniversary present, Jimmy got me the most wonderful and fun thing ever to play with.  That I love.  Don't really understand how to use yet to it's full potential.  But I love it.  The reason I haven't blogged is because as I started using this camera to take pictures for the blog - I couldn't find the time to sit down and read how to get the dang pictures off the camera and onto my computer.  Ta-da!  I finally found that time and figured it out.  Please take a second to admire my beautiful new and fun toy!

The best part?  When he handed it over he made sure to mention that he saved all the money himself for the present and paid for it in cash.  That officially makes it the BEST present ever :)  Yeah Jimmy!

Anyways - you saw some pictures of the dinner - but after the dinner and a stroll around the plaza we came home to play with our "kids".  Aka I sat on the floor in my dress hanging out with Milly and Jimmy snapped some pictures.  I love the shutter speed on this thing, it catches every movement!!

Another fun anniversary day time activity that I put on my facebook wall, but didn't get on the blog yet is a house project.  Go figure that on our anniversary we choose to do something as fun as rip up carpet in the hallway.  I think I mentioned before of the big revalation that our entire upstairs has hardwood floors underneath.  Well to date, we had only ripped up the carpet in the guest room closet to get a good look at the floors.  Well - we decided to take a bigger plunge and rip up the carpet in the hallway and stairs - as we weren't ready or willing to move all the furniture out of any room at this point.  So off we went....

Jimmy grabbed the carpet ripper and away he went.

There is the wood!

Stairs before- carpet.

Stairs after - all the wood.  What I didn't picture was my HUGE wound from hammering the pry bar to get the nail strips off the stairs.  That was not-so-fun especially because that was the hardest part and Jimmy bailed to go clean at that point.  Sweet!!

And the hallway after.  Still a work in progress and nothing has changed in 2 weeks from when we did this.  The plan is to rip it up in all the other rooms and then have some company come in for the weekend (after we essentially move all our furniture around to other parts of the house) and sand the floors and re-finish them.  They are  nice, but definitely need a fresh finish.  And I think we might just do the living room and dining room too.  I mean - why not? Haha.  It's just money....right....but no, really it's just so they can all be the same color and look fresh and so clean.

And to end our anniversary night - yep, I did it.  I wanted to from the day we got married and I kept telling Jimmy I was going to and he didn't believe me.  I busted out my wedding dress.  Tried it on again (it fit!) and cooked dinner in it.  I couldn't eat dinner because I could barely breathe...so during dinner I switched the dress for the veil.  Which I wore all night long, including during folding laundry.  It made it so much more fun.  Now, some people might think this makes me crazy, but let me tell you something...I am a little different people. But I do what I like to do and this just made me very happy putting on the dress I wore when I said my vows to the best guy in the world.  It made me happy to put it on again and brought me back to all the wonderful memories of that day.  The ones I never want to forget.  Yes, the big ones like the ceremony, first dance, etc.  But the little ones -

• The moment I slipped into my dress for the first time in my parent's house and all my bridesmaids faces
• Getting the huge dress in Lauren's car to head to the church
• Standing in the cry room in the church reading the last card that Jimmy wrote for me before I walked down the aisle
• Hearing the song that I was going to walk down the aisle to start and the door swing open
• The feeling of overwhelming happiness walking down (eh - I sort of sprinted) the aisle to Jimmy
• Our families and friends coming together in one big room and having so much fun
• Dancing with my friends and watching them learn thriller
• Getting a beer and then losing it every time I turned around to take a picture with someone
• Jimmy not wanting to leave the reception because he became BFF with the cleaning lady's daughter
• Finally getting to our hotel - absolutely exhausted, but so excited at the same time to wake up 4 hours later and head to our honeymoon

All those little things - brought back from slipping on that dress, cooking up some chicken tacos for my wonderful husband of one year in our house - our home.  The place that we live, love, laugh and cry.  Our home.  So happy that dress made me.  It was like a time machine.  And the pictures are not-so-hot, since I'm pretty sure I didn't shower that day, but you know what, I was happy :)

Gotta get one with Milly :)

Oh - and this one is horrible, but just to show you that (A) Vanessa - I do put the apron you gave me as a bridesmaid present to good use and (B) Mom - I didn't want to get my wedding dress more dirty than it already was :)

Looking forward to many more anniversaries filled with joy, house projects, love, laughter and fun.