Happy 1-Year!

As of June 18th I have had this blog going for one year! I can't believe that it's been a year already because the very first post that I made was shortly after our wedding to recap the festivities.

June 7th, last Sunday, was our one year anniversary! I guess we are no longer considered newlyweds. Kind of sad, but also exciting. We spent our first anniversary very quietly, relaxing together in the backyard with the puppy and reminiscing about what we were doing a year ago at that time. Let me tell ya, I really really enjoyed our wedding, the planning process, actual ceremony, the honeymoon, all of it, but I am soooo glad that it's now behind us! Our lives have been much more enjoyable since everything has calmed down!

One thing we did not do was eat our top cake tier. Unfortunately, we lost our cake in the Great Power Outage of September 2008. There was a terrible windstorm that left us without power for nearly a week. Well, needless to say, I'm sure that year old cake would be even worse once it was melted and refrozen, so we just cut our losses and pitched it back in September. Instead, we had a nice grilled dinner on the back deck. I'm sure it tasted better than year old cake would have.

I can't wait to see what is ahead of us for our second year of marriage. I can only hope that it's as great as our first!



In honor of my bloggiversary, I have changed the look of my blog a little bit. I thought it could use a bit of a change since it's a whole year old! What do you think?

::Sits Down Quietly in the Back of the Classroom::

I apologize for being an AWOL blogger. I've been busy and although a lot has been going on, I have yet to blog about it. I'll take pictures of something and think to myself, I'll be sure to put that on the blog! Nope. Doesn't happen. Why? Because (and I fully admit it) I'm lazy.

So, on to what has been keeping us busy for the last few weeks.

Ugh... I'm writing this as Go Cubs Go! is blaring out of the TV at a much too high for comfort level and Mark is dancing/lip syncing along. Apparently the Cubbies are celebrating a win. All I know is that there has been waaaay too much sports on our TV between golf and baseball today.

Okay, back on track.

2 weeks ago: Yard Sale.

Being the good strong community people that we are, we participated in the Community Yarage (not sure what the real difference is between a yard and garage sale ::shrug::) Sale that was held on June 6th.

Our set up:

Let me tell ya, hosting a yard sale sure is an errrm... interesting way to meet all of your neighbors. At about 8.45 on yard sale morning, as Mark and I were still fairly early in the process of getting set up, Old Lady (as we call her) from across the street comes over to check out our wares.

Now, this seems perfectly innocent of course, but here's something you must know - Old Lady is a notorious busy body. When we first moved in, she welcomed us by coming up to our open window as Mark was closing up the house for the evening, poking her face up to the screen and asking if she could talk to Mark for a minute. After the initial shock of someone sneaking up to our window at 10 at night, Mark went outside to see what she wanted. What couldn't wait til daytime you ask? She was coming to tell us that it's safer to leave our porch light on overnight. Mindyourownbusinesslady!

Alas, I digress. So, we got to rub elbows with Old Lady and a couple of people from her brood a few times during the course of the sale. They were definitely our best customers. We also found out that her daughter (Vonda, I believe) eloped with her semi-toothless husband a few months back to Niagara Falls for the weekend before coming back to Ohio to settle in with her mom. They recently moved out and got their very own apartment. Yay for them! Okay, I probably sound mean here, it's kind of hard not to while still relaying the stories, but in all honesty they are pretty nice.

We met our hippy neighbors along with their daughter and mulleted-son. They drove up in a giant circa early 80s blue Lincoln. They bought a veil for the little girl to play dress up in. Hippy-Dad nearly had a heart attack about that one.

We met our slightly-down-the street-and-across-the-road-neighbor along with who we thought were her grandchildren, but turned out to be her own kids. Oops! She informed us that she's friendly, but not too friendly. "Don't be coming down to my house right after my husband leaves for work in the morning for a cup of coffee and a chat. I had a neighbor like that down in Florida". Okay... I'll keep that in mind.

Anyway, the garage sale was quite a success. We got rid of quite a few things that were doing nothing but taking up storage space and ended up making some cash in the process. Mark's mom came down to help us with our endeavor and she's quite the saleslady! She talked a little old lady into purchasing a microwave by going down the her car and all but knocking on the car window to wheel and deal with her! In the end, Little Old Lady ended up with a gently used microwave and us with $15. Pretty good deal for a microwave that came with the house that we never even used!

Ultimately we ended up offloading 1 of 2 desks, 2 microwaves, a bookshelf, a carpet shampooer, and several random knick knacks. It's amazing what people will buy if you put a 25 cents sticker on it. For real.

I think this is the end of our Yarage Sale career at least for this year.