Becoming His 31

1 Year Anniversary

8:52 PM

Mark and I celebrated our 1 YEAR Anniversary this past weekend.

1 year? Already? Really??? Wow.

I can't believe I've been living with my husband, in our new home, as a married couple for a year already. I guess time flies when you're having fun. :)

We celebrated our 1 year by heading to the OBX for a little R&R.

Here are a few snap shots from our trip:

Our Hotel Room :)

Mark and I did a lot of traveling this past year and I'm still not over the thrill of getting to stay in the same hotel room as him.

We had a balcony with a great view of the ocean.

After we checked into the hotel Mark had a surprise for me...

He looked at the traditional anniversary gift list and saw that a gift of Paper was traditional for year 1.

He put a creative spin on something paper and bought us a kite to fly together at Jockey's Ridge.

It just so happened to be the best, blustery day possible for flying kites. :)

He's sort of a pro at it.

But he got tired after a while. :)

I don't mean to brag or anything buuuttt I was pretty great at flying the air plane kite too.

One day I'll remember to stop pulling my hair back in buns and ponytails so I can look cute in the unexpected moments of fun and memories that we capture in photos.

(Like the night Mark proposed!)

The foot prints we left in the sand on our way down the dunes.

Friday night we had a casual dinner at Mark's favorite BBQ place.

PIGMAN's!

I'm not a huge Pulled Pork, Carolina Style, BBQ fan. Actually I don't like it all. But they had a delicious beef brisket BBQ so I enjoyed that while Mark savored his pulled pork.

After dinner we did some shopping at the outlet stores there. Fortunately they weren't having that great of sales, so I refrained from spending too much. :)

Saturday we spent the day at the beach together.

Mark splurged for some top scale beach snacks. It definitely beats the usual of Sun Chips and Wheat Thins that we take to the beach.

Just some fun editing I did of a picture. Probably my favorite from the trip. :)

It would be nice to always have someone around to take a picture for you, because this is just not the most flattering of poses. Especially when you're all dressed up.

Some Sea Food on Water Front.

We enjoyed some local catch flounder, she crab soup, and coconut shrimp.

We tried to get some cute pictures outside but it was just little too windy for that to happen. : /

A little Cotton Gin Shopping after dinner... My Mr. Right. ; )

I don't know about you, but some sort of dessert is always a must for me after special dinners. Ice cream was deliciously messy on this particular night.

Some Anniversary Presents for Mark. Joullies for his coffee cup. Just a little something practical to go along with his big present.

My sister Erin Helped me make a Pinterest Inspired Project. He was super excited about it!

All of his old Tshirts that he didn't wear any more but didn't want to get rid of made into a blanket for him. :) It turned out wayyyy better than I thought it would, most of the thanks to Erin's sewing skills.

The Sweetest of cards. I love cards and I've probably saved every card Mark has ever gotten me.

Mark bought me Tom's! I've been dying to get a pair.

Sporting my new shoes... And also my dress since I didn't really get a good picture of it before. :)

We ended the night with some sparkling grape juice and the top of our wedding cake.

Which unfortunately turned out to be inedible. Darn Freezer Burn.

But it was fun unwrapping it, setting it out and reminiscing about our cake cutting during the reception.

Enjoying some sparkling grape juice :)

We got up early the next morning, the day of our actual anniversary, to have breakfast since we would be heading home right after to spend some time celebrating Mothers Day with our Beautiful Mama's.

{Again, this pose, not really working for us ;)}

French Toast for me, Waffles for my man. :)

When we got home I had my sister Mallory take some pictures of us to officially commemorate our ONE YEAR Anniversary. I want to buy a photo album and put one picture along with a memory from that anniversary each year. It will be fun to see how we change over the years.

Happy Anniversary Mark Thomas.

Thank you for loving me, learning to live with me this past year and for choosing me to be your partner in what will be the adventure of a lifetime.

Thank you for the best year of my life so far.

Here's to many, many more.

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Prayer 101

7:07 PM

For the past year I have been praying for something pretty specific for my family. This prayer has so far gone unanswered, as far as my worldly eyes can tell anyways. I know God answers prayers in ways we can't even imagine and sometimes in ways we don't understand. It's so easy to become frustrated when prayers seem to go unanswered, especially because I often have a very different time table than God and expect prayers to be answered when I want them too. Sometimes feeling that God is not even listening. Have you ever felt this way? As I thought about my "unanswered" prayer this past year I began to question the way I was praying. Was my prayer aligning with God's will? Was I concerning myself with God's will at all or did I have tunnel vision just waiting for my answer? Had I really been devoting myself to prayer on this matter or had my prayers been half hearted? Sometimes I think I get caught up in the way books, studies and people suggest to pray and forget about the simplicity, honesty and humility that God is asking for from His WORD when we pray.

I shouldn't have been surprised that the very same weekend I began questioning my prayer life our pastor began a sermon series on The Lords Prayer. He titled it Prayer 101, breaking down and unpacking each verse one by one. It was as if God was saying, "I AM listening. Now let's look at they way you're communicating with me." I am going to be digging deeper into the way I pray, not with the hope that my prayer will be instantly answered, but with the anticipation of improving my communication the Lord. To know Him better. To seek His will in every prayer and every answer or "non answer." And I'm going to be sharing what I learn here, using my pastor's same title for this new series of posts.

Is there something in your life that you've been praying for that has seemed to go "unanswered"?

Have you changed the way you approach prayer?

Has God revealed new things to you through your new approach?

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Wife Fail...?

7:20 PM

Sunday dinner consisted of chicken tenders, french fries and some macaroni cheese poppers (these were a test- we had never tried them before!) heated thoroughly on our pizazz...

I sort of felt like I was failing as a wife.

Dinner on a pizazz? Heated up, pre-packaged, frozen food?

What happened to all of the recipes that I pin daily on pinterest and my promises to eat healthier, less processed/pre-packaged food?

The answer: I don't know. I just really didn't feel like making dinner last night.

I'm sure, in fact I'm 100% positive, that I'm not the only to make their husband (and their self) frozen food for dinner, but I still couldn't help but feel guilty. I mean, I spend a good portion of my evenings looking at pinterest and blogs on eating healthy whole foods, striving to become a proverbs 31 woman, feeding your husband delicious meals, planning meals, and so on and so forth.

But sometimes, it has to be okay to take a break... Right?

Sometimes I just need to to make a dinner that takes 5 minutes to "prep" and 10 minutes to heat up.

I don't want to make this a habit, in fact I'm trying harder and harder to make healthy eating the habit, but I'm going to allow this to be the exception. And when the exception happens, I'm going to convince myself not to feel guilty!

Thankfully... well, maybe not thankfully, but on occasions like this I'm glad that my husband sometimes prefers the simplicity of chicken tenders and fries. And grateful that in a loving way, he holds no unrealistic expectations that I'll be cooking him a 4 course meal every day. :)

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Handy Man

New Fence

9:12 PM

Thanks to Piper's fast rate of growth and her new love for barking at our neighbors through the small picket fence to the right of our house... we decided it was time to put up a privacy fence.

We had a few people come out and give us estimates on doing the work, which ranged from $1,500 to $2,200! We couldn't bring ourselves to pay that money just to save some sweat and labor on ~~our~~ Mark's part. So Mark decided he could do without the big wigs and decided to recruit the help of my younger brother Noah to replace the picket fence. It took a little longer than they thought it would, plus a few extra trips to the hardware store than they originally planned, but it definitely saved us some cash! It's completely finished and now we don't have to worry about our neighbors conspiring against us because of our pup!

Mark and Noah installing the gate this morning.

I was at work on Friday when the majority of the fencing was put up, so I only got pictures of them finishing it up today.

I couldn't resist getting a close up shot of this gorgeous guy. Something about my man building and fixing things for his house and family that just makes my heart beat a little faster.