Six years of wedded bliss

Two weekends ago was the hubs and I's sixth anniversary. SIXTH! I know, I can barely believe it myself. What business we have of already being married six years, I don't know. But I wanted to share some pics from that weekend. All of them were taken with our phones and some are fuzzy, sorry bout it.

My mom and sister generously agreed to watch our baby girl for her VERY FIRST overnighter without us. Oh the excitement! And oh how glorious it was to sleep in on that Saturday morning.

We took our time getting ready, fitting in an episode or two of 30 Rock, and then headed to Uptown to begin our adventures. Chocolate Eclairs at Woullet Bakery to start things off was a great choice, by the way. Then we hopped on our bikes and rode around Lake Calhoun, Lake of the Isles, and Lake Harriet. THREE! Three lakes I tell you! I was shocked to later learn that we only biked a total of about ten miles because my thighs SWORE it was at least 25.

*Quick Disclaimer: I do have friends who bike (or run) many MANY more miles than this on a regular basis so I won't get too cocky.*

But still my sense of accomplishment that day was large. Large indeed.

Along the way we played a new game (our new obsession, I think we are maybe becoming gamers?? alarming? but maybe not), stopped to chat on benches, went swimming in some chilly but oh so refreshing water (it was like icing my thighs. my thighs! oh the burn), admired all the lovely houses, and got rained upon. 

Bike helmets give me Mary Tyler Moore hair. By the way, did you know that show takes place it Minnesota?!? I most certainly did not. Until recently.

Our new favorite game, Lost Cities. Perfect for two players and compact enough to bring wherever we go because we are obsessed.

Gasp! Ghost feet! Just kidding, don't be alarmed. It's just us whiteys.

Approaching storms. This was about the time we started pedaling faster. But oh my thighs!

Then we headed to the MOA to use up a gift card we had there for dinner. Parking lot photo!

For the first time we tried one of those pay-by-weight frozen yogurt places. I know, we are so behind the times! But now I can do this: #FROYO

We had such a great weekend, and it was fabulous to have so much time to focus on just the two of us.

Not that we didn't miss our little girl, though. Basically with every baby that we passed by you could be sure to hear "awwwww Paisleyyyyy" come out of my mouth. 

Last year for our anniversary I was so preggo.

And the year before that we went to the zoo!

5 Years!

We had a great anniversary.

Starting out with trying to get a nice picture of ourselves. Trying is the key word here.

We finally got one with two nice smiles, no double chins, and both our faces.

Activities of the weekend included delicious homemade ice cream at Crema Cafe. (I got chai tea ice cream, and yes the word you are looking for is YUM.)

Dinner and bowling at Bryant Lake Bowl. I tried not to bend or twist my back at all (it's been a-hurtin' lately) so I looked preeetty silly trying to bowl like that. Very stick straight. But in a basketball belly type of way.

In other news, it turns out that I score better when I bowl pregnant lady style.

The hubs bowling and keeping score. He's having a good time, I swear!

Me complaining after realizing that I had no socks to wear with the bowling shoes. This was a large bummer. The second picture is of me making the most of a stinky situation.

The hubs was the perfect gentleman and offered his socks for me to wear...but I wasn't sure that would make things any better. All boys as a rule have very sweaty feet. But I did appreciate the gesture.

Other activities included playing Ticket to Ride at least six times over the course of the weekend - my new favorite game and one of my anniversary gifts. My other gift was a gorgeous new glider and ottoman for the baby's room! What a great (GREAT) hubs I have. I've been enjoying sitting on it out in the living room since the baby's room is no where close to ready yet.

We'd better get on that.

The weekend was such a blast and as it came to an end I felt very happy and blessed. Not only with a fantastic marriage that is still going strong, but also with wonderful and generous family members who have been supporting us all along and are still supporting us as we step into a new chapter of our lives.

Thanks guys.

I documented last year's anniversary too, here!

Inspiration from the Zoo

Hello. It's week 4 of the Inspiration Workshop! This week's prompt was Spend the Day Playing.


This prompt came at just the right time, because the hubs and I had taken a day off from work last Friday for fun and play at the Minnesota Zoo in celebration of our four year wedding anniversary! It was such a blast, and all of the animal encounters were good ones. Lots of up closes! I guess you could probably call us zoo animal whisperers. If you want.


Gussy challenged us to make a photo collage and I accepted the challenge.

I will make a list of explanations in the order of the pictures, because I love making lists. 

• Mr. Wolf came close to the glass.
• Me wearing an elephant earring in the spirit of going to the zoo.
• My favorite part: prairie dogs. Sometimes they throw their head and hands back and shriek. I didn't know that they did that. So comical!
• Flamingos. One drinks from the gross orange murk water.
• Me with a tiger. Looking happy.
• Me pretending to be a reindeer. Brian getting really excited that he got a shot of the reindeer right inside my arm/head triangle.
• Me pretending to be a bear. That bear ended up walking around really close to the glass, scratching his back and butt on anything he could find. Like Baloo the Bear from Jungle Book. I guess Disney is pretty accurate when it comes to the portrayal of bear habits.
• Us looking happy on our anniversary.
• The hubs found a tunnel.
• "Liz, come into the tunnel!" "No, I'm wearing a dress."
• Brian making a lemur face alongside a lemur. Lemur's are his favorite, he loves their bushy tails. He wishes he had one of his own. A tail, that is. Although he probably wouldn't say no to a pet lemur.
• Me using my owl purse in the spirit of going to the zoo. People kept staring at me while Brian took this pic. Guess it's weird to take pictures of your owl purse in public places.
• A wolverine that liked to play with paper in a tree.
• The hubs with an orange swirl ice cream cone.

I think a couple of the pictures are blurry. Sorry about that. But I'm not redoing the collage.

Oh and let me give you another list. This one is about why this anniversary was so great:

• We got free passes for the zoo from the library.
• We had a gift card for Olive Garden for dinner.
• We got a free rental from Blockbuster that night.
• Our anniversary was free. Except for parking at the zoo.
• Fabuloooouuuuss!!!!!

When we got home from the zoo and dinner we watched our free movie, Despicable Me (yes, totally loved it like everyone said I would) in our basement because our upstairs smelled gross from this weird maple flavored sausage we had cooked that morning. Confession time. I just hate it when our house smells like meat. Hate it so much. Don't get me wrong, I like to eat the meat. I just don't like to smell it. In my house. Is that weird? Wait, don't tell me. Just humor me.

Then we both worked on drawing stuff. The hubs on a pic for his dad for Father's day, and myself on an armadillo. Which actually turned out to be a platypus. Or the other way around. It was traumatic.

Let's wrap this up. Our day spent playing was the best ever. :)

Here's the linkup!

Previous Inspiration Workshop posts: week 1, week 2, week 3