I am really loving the Muffin Tin Monday idea. I see the genius in it for kids, but also on an adult level too. I think I might try it on Sam, we’ll see how weird a look he gives me the first time! (via Polka Dot Creations)

This week back to life after our vacation has been pretty blah, so I thought I’d add some more Levi pictures that make me smile.

Levi and Sam are getting along really well. They both really like to play together and you can tell they’re going to be great buds.

On Monday we took him with us to a local ice cream shop. He was really well behaved and I think he had a good time sniffing and lounging about.

We haven’t been able to figure out how to get him to look at the camera. I have a few shots of him, but if you saw how many pictures I had to delete of the side of his head, you’d see how true that is.

Levi’s been a lot of fun to get to know, but yes, dogs are a lot of work. I think we’re all learning to mesh though.

Yesterday Sam and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. My lovely husband sent me some beautiful flowers at work:

After work we went out for a nice dinner at Olive Garden (yum!) and then came home to the traditional 1st anniversary dessert:

Year old wedding cake, almost year old grape juice, and freshly baked pineapple upside down cakes!

The cake… well it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Kinda dry, but other than that it was okay. Not something I’d eat for kicks, but impressive for a year in the freezer.

We also had a bottle of grape juice that we bought at the Biltmore on our honeymoon. We hadn’t intended to keep it til our anniversary, but after we kept forgetting to drink it we decided just to save it for the special occasion. It hadn’t been opened so it was still good.

But the highlight was the freshly baked pineapple upside down cakes. That is by far my favorite type of cake. My grandmother called and asked me to stop by when I got off of work. I went over and she had just got done baking these two little cakes for us. SO good!

We both had a really great anniversary and I’m so blessed to have had Sam as my husband for the last year!

It’s been a long process, but yesterday - with A LOT of help from friends and family - we moved all of our junk stuff in record time. It feels so great being in our new home. I think we’re going to like it here!

The other day we were over at Sam’s parents’ house and his mom went “Oh, I have something for you!” (to me). She ran into the other room and came back with this:

Sorry for the privacy whiteout!

How cute is that!?! It’s a shirt that Sam decorated and wore when he was like 4 or 5. So cute!

I’m so glad she gave it to me. Now I’m just trying to figure out what I should do with it. I’m thinking about possibly trying to figure out a cute way to display it, I hate to just keep it in a closet somewhere.

Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
by Christopher Moore

I really wasn’t sure about this book at all. Sam had wanted to read it, but I was hesitant because I thought that it would be a lot of Jesus bashing/making fun of which I am not into at all. I told Sam he could give me a review after he read it. Shortly after he started reading it, I began reading the good reviews at GoodReads. Sam chimed in with good reviews and I promised him I would read it when he was done.

This book is obviously fiction. The author, in the afterword, emphasizes this himself. It does take liberties with events and such (as any good fiction does) but honestly, I didn’t feel like the book was offensive at all (to me). Lamb takes a look at the life of Jesus (especially those years before He began his ministry) through the eyes of Biff, his best friend. Biff is a bit mischievous (who doesn’t have one of those friends) but is always there for Jesus. It’s a humorous, charming, adult (Biff does enjoy, um, “adult activities”) book that I would recommend to anyone, Christian or not. I enjoyed it.

First off, let me start by saying that we live in Indiana. In Indiana you don’t get many earthquakes. Big trucks driving by that make your walls shake, sure, but earthquakes? No, that doesn’t really happen.

This morning, around 5:30, Sam and I both woke up since our bed was waving and our headboard was thwacking against the wall. I was still half asleep, had no idea what was going on, and kept suggesting different far out ideas until Sam reassured me that it must’ve been an earthquake. It was so crazy feeling and lasted what felt like about 30 seconds. When we woke up a couple of hours later, the news confirmed that we felt an earthquake.

A photo recreation of how I felt and what I would’ve done if I had been near a door at the time. Maybe.

Then around 10 or so this morning, there was an aftershock that felt worse to me than the original (this may have been since I was sitting at a desk rather than lying in a bed and the fact that I work on the second floor of our building). For a couple of seconds it felt like my desk was just waving. Some people around here felt that one, some people didn’t.

It was a really weird feeling. I’m glad I don’t live in California. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be in destructive earthquakes!