Yesterday was our friend Erik’s birthday. He came over to help me out with a project that I’m working on, on his birthday nonetheless - how nice! We baked him a cake and I even cooked dinner. Erik and Sam were brave enough to try it and they even said that it was pretty good. Anyways, it was fun getting to hang out with Erik on his birthday!

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.

Now that we have our own house we got sort of serious about getting a family dog. We weren’t sure we were going to get a dog so soon, but little Levi (also known by his old name, Toto) was looking for a new home (he didn’t get along with his other dog friend at his old one). Levi seems to like his new home so far - napping, running around outside and chasing lizards. He really likes going for car rides in his carrier and sniffing everything. He’s one year old, but still partly full of puppy energy. I think he’ll make a fine addition to our family!

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!

Our new swing is perfectly meredith-sized!

Bought these cute little baskets at Hobby Lobby today. They’ll be great for all the little hair things of mine that seem to congregate in the bathroom.

Working on the little things that make a house a home. Trying to make sure everything has a place in hopes that this time around we will have a more peaceful home environment. So far so good, but we are only four days in.

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!