Time flies when you're having fun!

A year ago on Sunday, I married my best friend and since then, time has flown!  In that year I: quit my job as a teacher to become a full time grad student; I moved from Lexington to Louisville to Chicago; I pushed pause on my ministry of Young Life to enter into a season of rest and intimacy with God and (obviously) I went from living with my best girl friend to living with my best guy friend.  Needless to say, my life looks totally different, but it's been a wonderful year despite all those differences!

Stephen and I decided to celebrate by taking a small trip to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin with a few stops along the way (and back).  I'll share a small snippet and let you know that I LOVED Lake Geneva and would recommend it to anyone - it's so quaint and cute and wonderful!

Stephen took the day off from work on Friday so we had a full three days together!  We started the weekend off by heading to Tony's Deli in Chicago to grab our lunch.  There's my home-made Italian Specialty, Stephen ;) Their meatball sub was super tasty!

We took our lunch with us to the Chicago Botanic Gardens and enjoyed the gorgeous scenery and weather (it was upper 70s-low 80s and NO humidity).

We drove to Lake Geneva, checked into our little home for the next 2 nights and then enjoyed a quick dinner and trip to Walmart to stock up on Oatmeal for breakfast :).

On Saturday we woke up and were really slow to get moving.  Once we caught our wind for the day we headed to downtown Lake Geneva for their Octoberfest celebration.

After we enjoyed the festivities we headed to the pier to wait for our boat tour of the lake.  If you're ever in Lake Geneva, I highly recommend you take a boat tour of the lake - what a great, relaxing experience!

We finished off the evening with a walk around the lake and some dinner and dessert - a pumpkin milkshake...yum!

On Sunday, we feasted on an oatmeal breakfast :) and then we headed to Mukwonago, WI to The Elegant Farmer for some Honey Crisp Apples, a pumpkin and for Stephen to make his own caramel apples :).

And then, on our way home we passed the sign for the Jelly Belly Warehouse in Pleasant Prairie, WI and we knew we (Stephen) just couldn't pass this up! ;)  So we stopped and got a free tour of the warehouse AND a free package of jelly belly beans for each of us.  We couldn't stop with just that so we made sure we purchased a bag of the Jelly Flops (the bag of beans that didn't make it into the real bags because their size was off).

And that was the sweet end to our wonderful First Anniversary Weekend :). 

I am blessed!  I can't imagine finding a more perfect man to spend the rest of my days with.  I've never met anyone else that reminded me more of Jesus than Stephen - he's as selfless, caring and considerate as they come.  I look forward to all the fun we have together in our future!

In honor of my favorite season (fall) and our wedding anniversary, I'm going to spend some time next week showcasing some of my DIY projects that we used in our wedding so be sure to stop by and take a peek at the great things that you can do for any type of celebration!