Our actual anniversary was yesterday, our last full day in San Francisco. To celebrate, we had dinner at a nice restaurant on the bay - Neptune's Palace. It had a great view out over the bay, which was nice! We got to watch the sun set and the clouds roll in over Alcatraz.
Somehow, I managed to not get a picture of us together at the restaurant, but we did get these two earlier in the day at Muir Woods National Park and in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.
After dinner, we returned to the hotel to exchange gifts. We decided it would be a fun tradition to exchange traditional anniversary gifts each year. It will be fun to be creative with that!
This year was paper...so many ways to go with that. I had several ideas, but after seeing a Groupon for 50% off, I decided to go with a subscription to D magazine. Michael has several subscriptions about to expire, so he was really excited about getting a new magazine, which was one of his guesses. He opened a copy of the August 2011 issue and then found the gift certificate with the subscription code between the pages. Unfortunately, Michael's "paper" must have looked suspicious to the TSA because it had been opened when I got my luggage. Nice!
Michael put more thought and creativity into my gift. It was interactive and had instructions with it! After reading my sweet card, I had to draw a number from the bag. Each number corresponded to a homemade coupon that he then gave me to fill in on the list. I get to use #1 this month, #2 in September, and so forth so that I have a coupon to use each month until our next anniversary. It's fun that we both got monthly gifts to last through the year! I can't wait to use each of my coupons. Michael really played to my likes: coupons, quality time, massages, and food!
When we got home today, our wedding DVD was waiting for us! It was delivered today, and we were so excited to watch it. Mom had wrapped our wedding cake to freeze after the wedding, and she thawed it out over the weekend so that we could eat it tonight while we watched our wedding video. The cake wasn't as wonderful as it was at the wedding, but it was surprisingly good after being frozen for a year! It was fun to see our wedding video and even more fun to watch it with Michael.
Michael, I love you so much! I can't imagine anyone better to spend the rest of my life with. This past year has flown by, and I think it's because we have had so much fun together. I love your joy for life and your giving heart. You make each day special, and I love that about you. Thank you for loving me and for always taking care of me. I can't wait to see what year 2 has in store for us!
