Right before I left, Jeremy and I celebrated our first year of marriage in Chicago. It was a little bit of fanfare, because our real anniversary was on Sunday and Latter-day Saints try not to spend money on Sunday, so we celebrated Saturday. Both of us felt like it was cheating a little to celebrate the day before though, so we went ahead and celebrated Sunday anyways. That felt real and wonderful and romantic.

As a present to me, Jeremy woke himself up early, which was incredible because normally our mornings involve our alarm clock going off for 15 minutes and me pushing on Jeremy with my arms and legs from the other side of the bed to get him out. But he rolled out of bed and took me to the Doughnut Vault, the smallest, swankiest, most in demand Doughnut (Donut) shop you ever did see.

We had originally planned on going on an Architecture River Cruise, but it began raining and thundering something fierce (we heard they even had to evacuate Lollapalooza) so we watched the  torrential downpour from our apartment instead. This was just as fun as a river cruise, of course, it stopped raining right as the window for our cruise was over, so we went to the beach and skipped stones into the lake instead. These photos were taken by a nice woman and her husband who were on their second year of marriage. They were pretty people, and very nice. Our favorite part about them is that they were metal detecting the beach. Lame-Cool at it’s finest.

We had a fancy dinner at The Pump Room. Delicious. My drink had papaya and chili pepper and I actually loved it.

We came back that night and watched Batman Begins, since neither of us had ever seen it. The next morning we went to church, had our friends over, and then went up to the top of the Sears (Willis psshhh) Tower. This was my favorite part of the whole anniversary. There were a lot of different tourists there who had a totally different concept of personal space than us arms-distance Americans, but we got to see an incredible view. It was probably corny and dorky, but we don’t regret it. It was the best possible way to cap off our Chicago experience.

We had both individually decided to write each other love letters instead of give presents that day,  so we tucked into a (somewhat) private corner of the unbelievably crowded building and read our letters. I got teary it was so beautiful. I love this Jeremy Man with my whole heart, and, even though I can’t believe that someone could really love me sometimes, I know that he does. Obviously I’ve read the letter fifty times since then. We decided to make love letters a yearly tradition, so even in the rough years and all through out the great times, we get to pause and realize how much we love each other, and how far we’ve come… and if possible, we will try to read them in a cool location.

I’m going to miss this Skyline, but even more I miss this man. He’s finishing up work in Chi-Town, while I start work in Provo. But we had a beautiful anniversary and what’s more, a beautiful first year of marriage.