Anniversary #6

We started our 6th anniversary by exchanging our candy gifts.  We are 6 for 6 on giving traditional gifts and plan on continuing the tradition.  I love how it focuses us in on something particular to give, even if I wasn't the most thrilled to bring so much candy into our house.

I didn't know how to present candy besides a candy gram.  But I'm terrible with words and puns so I got A LOT of help from pinterest.

Marcel, on the other hand, is fantastic with words and puns and he wrote me this sweet note and handed me the candy as I read it out loud.

 

We didn't intend to do our May envelope dates on our anniversary but the 2 weekends leading up to it were rainy so we kept putting them off.

On our way to the Farmers Market!

We stopped in the middle of our adventure of the market to take in Freak Alley.  This was my favorite spot.

Last year, Lilli told us non-stop about the donuts she gets at the market.  And when we went to the market last year, we only went to the second location and the only donuts they had were from a bakery so we got them.  They were delicious but when we sent her the picture of our donuts she replied that they were wrong.  This year we found the right ones and they were yummy!

Then we went to see Pitch Perfect 2 and took a selfie on the escalator, so that our picture didn't turn out too dark (see below!)

 We went home for a few hours and Marcel took a nap before heading to Applebee's for dinner.

The other May envelope was to go to the drive-in, but we were super excited about the movies so we decided to camp in the backyard.  When we got home from dinner and looked at the forecast, it called for thunderstorms so we decided to camp in the living room.  We had to move the coffee table and one couch out of the way, but it fit perfectly.  Marcel decided to do the dishes and had me set up the tent on my own.  It was really easy because the only poles just make an x, but it still felt good to know I did it on my own.

Then we watched a movie from our Netflix queue that I already don't remember the name of and played Phase 10.  It was probably one of my best games ever!

26 Days of Birthday

This year I celebrate my golden birthday: turning 26 on the 26th and gave Marcel the challenge to give me 26 gifts.  He was forced to get pretty creative, however, because we don't have it in the budget for him to go buy something for each day...
I started the month by keeping track of everything I received, but after a few days I forgot to keep doing it, but to the best of my memory, I was treated to:

Breakfast in bed, Moxie Java, sleeping in, a movie in the theater, Hot Tamales and a note taped to the front door waiting for me when I got home from work, a milk shake, a Snickers bar, plenty of chores being done, a BSU shirt, a beautiful flower arrangement.  I know that wasn't 26 things but there really was 26 things...

We celebrated my actual birthday with a trip to Outback.  After a month of celebrations, Outback was in our budget thanks to a free dinner coupon and a giftcard :)

We've been terrible about taking pictures lately, but a birthday was the perfect excuse to start taking them again!

Burkdoll Wedding

On August 5th, my baby, but grown-up, sister, Hannah, got married.  Her and Matt spent a whole week in town and we had a blast:

Monday night, we had a bridal shower, but somehow managed not to take a single picture.

On Tuesday, we went go-carting,

and played mini-golf

and "drove" race cars

Wednesday night, we threw Hannah a Bachelorette party at my mom's house, because her i.d. was lost the night before

(it was found again the last night she was in town)

Sisters!

Could we look any less alike?

Presents

We were kinda sad about not being able to go out, but we had fun nonetheless!

Thursday night, we had a rehearsal and dinner

Bridesmaids

The soon-to-be Mr. & Mrs.

After the rehearsal the girls all stayed at my house for the night so Hannah and Matt didn't see each other before they took pictures.  Friday morning started early, with the boys playing golf and the girls decorating.  I kept saying how unfair that the boys do fun stuff while the girls work all day, but it worked out, because Hannah was up getting her hair done by the time the boys got back.  Mariah, Hannah's second grade teacher and the official photographer was great at capturing Matt's first look at Hannah!

 SISTERLY LOVE!

The girls!

Not the official one, but we needed some for facebook right away :)

It was such a beautiful ceremony.  I cried as soon as I saw her walking down the aisle, but having to look into Matt's tear filled eyes made it impossible to stop!

The next day, we watched them open all their gifts.  Most people were very considerate of their wishes of no gifts because of having a 20+ hour drive back to Kansas, but they still got some great stuff and it almost all fit into their car.

We're so happy for you two!!

2 Years of Wedded Bliss

Yesterday, Marcel and I spent the day celebrating 2 wonderful years of marriage!  The day started perfectly was we both slept until 9am. The rest of the day was spent redeeming coupon after coupon ;)  We didn't exchange gifts this year because we had already boughten ourselves a new bedset, which was needed very badly.  Plus it fit in with the 2nd year = cotton anniversary.  We've followed that tradition both years now and I hope we continue it in the future.

We started at Jared's to get our rings cleaned.  What better thing could you do on an anniversary than to add a little sparkle to your ring :)

We then headed to TGI Friday's to redeem a free appetizer coupon.  Next on the agenda was clothes shopping for MaryBeth with some money she earned for completing online surveys.  2 pairs of jeans and 1 pair of shorts for $7.00 (the 2 jeans came to a grand total of $1.21!).  That's the best type of shopping: when you get new stuff cheaper than you could buy at Goodwill.  We went right down the road to Macaroni Grill for our free dessert.  We had a coupon emailed to us since it was our anniversary, how sweet of them!

Then we were off to Wahooz! for a round of mini golf that we got BOGO.  It wasn't until the 10th hole that I told Marcel I was out to win, which turned out to be a big mistake.  I had been beating him until that point, and then he ended up winning.

 

We headed home to watch 1 of our redbox rentals, The Other Woman, which was a very sad movie.  After that we headed to our local TGI Friday's and ordered a basket of fries and redeemed our last coupon of the day for another free dessert.  We both highly recommend their new Oreo dessert, but only if you have a coupon because it is a huge rip-off if you have to pay the regular price of $5.59.  It wasn't until this stop in our day that Marcel asked if I had taken a before picture of all the coupons we were going to redeem.  I LOVE that he is more than happy to have our day revolve around what coupons we have.  It was also here that we decided we're going to strive to spend $10 per year of marriage on our anniversary activities each year.  We'll see how that goes, but we were under our $20 budget for this year!

 

 

We finished the next with another redbox, Unstoppable, which was really good and kept me on the edge of my seat.  But as I've posted before I could watch Denzel Washington all day long, as long as I'm cuddled up to my own good looking black man :)

We spent time in bed before drifting off to sleep talking about this upcoming year.  The things we hope to accomplish, both individually and together, things we are looking forward to and, in order to keep strengthening our marriage, the areas we think we can be improving on. 

All in all, it was a very low-key day, but turned out perfectly for us.  After the busyness of Marcel finishing up student teaching, school, etc, it was nice to have one complete day with no distractions or interruptions.  We're so lucky to have each other!

5 Years

Today marks a big day in our house.  It has been 5 years since Marcel and I started dating!  We've spent the last few days reminiscing our early days, which always makes for good conversation and a few good laughs.  This time, I remembered how skeptical people, including us, were of us, about how we were too different to make it work.  A long-distance summer "fling" started without much prior friendship that we both planned on ending when school started but neither of us ever got around to it.  And look where we are now!  It has been a great ride so far and we know that it will just continue to get better and better.

Our dating anniversary is just 8 days before our new, wedding anniversary, which aided me in gathering some of these photos.  This also means I'll have another anniversary post in a few days, but I couldn't let the "5 year" mark go without acknowledging it.

2006
(from September--MaryBeth's 21st birhtday--but it is the earliest one I could find on facebook)

2007
Tumwater Falls, WA

2008
Cannon Beach, OR

2009
8 days after being together 3 years!!

2010
Celebrating our 1st wedding anniversary

2011
Happy 5 years to us!!


Marcel,
You are my first and only love and I am so lucky to have you.  You make me happier than I could have ever imagined I would be.  I love you for always keeping me second in your life, behind nothing but God, even though you get pulled in so many directions by so many different things.  I am so grateful to have you support me in everything I do.  I love watching you with kids, especially Lilli, because I know that our kids will be the luckiest ones in the world to have you as their dad.  I hope you wake up and go to bed each day knowing just how much I love you, and that even if you know, I tell you anyway!  Thank you for these wonderful 5 years, and here's to many more filled with more happiness, joy and love than we could ever hope for!

Valentine's Day

Marcel and I decided not to exchange gifts for Valentine's Day and instead save the money for our upcoming cruise.  Even if it is June or July when we go, we decided we'd celebrate Valentine's on the beach somewhere and that would be way better than anything we could have done here.

I'm here to admit that I broke the rules, but just slightly!  We received a $10 coupon to Old Navy and even though I tried extremely hard to spend it on myself, I just couldn't find anything I wanted/needed, but of course there is always so much for Marcel.  After their clearance prices and the coupon, I paid just $0.63 for 2 new sweaters to add to his "teacher wardrobe", besides they weren't specifically for Valentine's Day, but I decided to save them until Valentine's.

Our day looked like this (minus all the boring stuff we did a part from each other, like me being at the dentist and Marcel being at work)

--Dinner at Taco Bell!  I know it is so romantic, but we had coupons for free tacos that were expiring so we were able to eat for $2.50 and that is budget friendly.
--Ice cream at Baskin Robbins!  I had a buy 1 cone, get 1 cone free coupon and decided that Valentine's Day was the best day to go out for ice cream, especially since we've given up all eating out for above-mentioned cruise fund.
--We then came home and watched Valentine's Day and Salt, which we rented for free thanks to Redbox's free promo codes.  We still have Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps to watch today when Marcel gets home from school.

And now to the pictures:

The BEST date ever

I LOVE how giddy I look in this picture.  It's like you can see the love I have for Marcel

Thanks to "The Dating Divas" for this idea!



Close-up of Marcel's love note



We spent the weekend leading up to Valentine's Day at home playing a lot of games.  Friday night, I went 2-0 in skipbo and 1-1 in Phase 10, which is great considering Marcel almost always wins.  Saturday night, we played Racko & Sequence.  We went 1-1 in Racko and Marcel beat me so many times in Sequence I didn't keep track, but I did beat him once!!  It was a HUGE success in the Bailey house, because we're approaching having been together 5 years and I have NEVER beat him at Sequence.

Playing game has never been more fun!

I got the camera out to take a picture of my winning board, but Marcel messed it up, because he didn't want it to be all over facebook that I finally beat him!