Our First Year!

It's hard to believe we've already been married for a year. For our anniversary, Eric planned a special surprise mini-vacation to Galena, Illinois. I was very excited and had a fun time trying to guess where we were going or what we were going to do.
Here are some pictures of our trip!

We had to leave late Friday night because we were involved in VBS at our church. When we finally headed out, we discovered that some of the high school girls had put "Happy Anniversary" signs on our Jeep.

We drove until way past our bedtime (it only took about a month of being married to convert Eric into my much earlier bedtime of 10:30ish). When we finally arrived at the hotel, the woman working the late shift was very congratulatory and upgraded us to a suite complete with fireplace and hot tub!



Pouring rain temporarily inhibited our morning kayaking plans, so we checked out the local museum.

Eric's favorite event of the weekend was, hands-down, the "canning place" where he got to taste 30 or so different home-made sauces and dips. Dad, you would be proud of me, I tried the hottest sauce they had!...my head doesn't sweat though :-)

Yes, it really was one of my favorite activities. The attraction for me (besides free samples, obviously) was the chance to try a lot of different things that I would never have considered buying. Raspberry Jalapeño Salsa Jelly? Didn't know it existed. I'm not one to mix my food groups much, but it's really good. More than anything, I think we both appreciated the chance to get out of the city and see a lot of green. There is much about Chicago life that we enjoy, but we miss country living too. To wrap up our eventful weekend, we enjoyed a piece of our wedding cake together.
It was SOOO good! Thanks to anyone who had a part in getting it wrapped up and stored for us! We dressed up, too, so it was fun!