Anniversaries

I was informed via email from The Knot today that it is officially 2 months since Nick and I were married (the second time). In all reality, we've really been married 3 and a half months, but it seems like so much longer (in a good way).

We survived Christmas and all four of the celebrations we attended, which were all so much fun and non-tense, a nice change from Christmases past. We got some great presents from family on both sides, including tools from my dad, which we would have never asked for, but were the perfect gift. This is amazing coming from him, as he did the shopping by himself this year, without Mom's supervision. He even got her a gorgeous sweater from Macy's that I went and bought in another color. He's growing up! Nick's mom got us cookbooks (YAY!), some great bakeware, and she embroidered 4 sets of dish towels for our kitchen. We both feel very blessed after this year. I also found the perfect gift for my mom. I did a photo collage of Jack with special sayings, some about dogs and some that I felt Jack would say if he could have talked. (If you're not an animal person, this sounds crazy, but . . . it's just the way we are.) I cried while making it and Mom cried when she opened it. She's told me a number of times now that it is the best present she's ever gotten. When Jack passed, she took it very hard and I'd like to think that this bunch of pictures and messages helps her just a little bit.

Christmas was great, but I'm glad it's all over. Now I'm taking a break from taking down our Christmas tree. Nick informed me that it needed to stay up the full 12 days of Christmas, which means that today was the day I was allowed to make it go away. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas and the lights and merriment, and when it's over, it's always a little depressing (especially when everyone in our neighborhood took down their lights-it was so pretty seeing almost every house lit up!), but it's time to have my living room back. My only problem at this point: I had such a hard time getting the tree up that I was pretty ticked by the time I was tightening it in the base and apparently I had some super-human strength or something because I cannot get it undone. Hmm. So I'm waiting for Nick to get up so he can (hopefully) loosen it.

In other news, we finally had our bedroom set delivered. We bought it from The Old Cannery on December 5th, and all the pieces were in stock except the nightstands, which were supposed to be in the following week, so we decided to wait to have it delivered until all the pieces were in. However, when we called on it the next week, we were informed that the nightstands wouldn't be in until the first week of January because they'd been backordered. On January 1st I called the Cannery and was told that no, it was actually going to be February. Well, I'd had enough, so we had them deliver all the pieces except the nightstands, which we'll have to pick up when they're in, and it looks beautiful in our room, although our new mattress isn't coming until next Thursday, so we're using our queen size on the king frame. It's been interesting. Something that was also interesting was the fact that I knew one of the movers. We had gone to PLU together and I hadn't seen him for something like 7 years. I opened the door and he was like, "Hey, I know you." Haha, small world!

One other "anniversary" was yesterday, which marked two weeks since we got Gus. It feels like we've always had him though. He makes life so much more fun and interesting!