What 1 year of true love looks like

I guess technically this is what a celebration of one year of true love looks like. A year of true love defies pictures, I feel. I could spend this blog entry telling you all about our true love, why it's been a great year, what I love about Jacob, etc. etc. But I don't feel a need to today...I've told him those things, so suffice it to say that it's been a great year and I love Jacob and I'm excited to see where our marriage takes us next. I'll tell you about our anniversary weekend instead.

About a week before, I asked Jacob if he had any ideas of how we should celebrate our anniversary. We're pretty poor at the moment, so I didn't want to go too crazy, but I wanted a celebration. Jacob informed me that he had been scheming, and that it was a surprise.

Now, Jacob usually just doesn't have it in him to keep a surprise a surprise for very long. He usually ends up revealing what the surprise is. But this time, he kept it all secret and didn't tell me a thing! Sunday afternoon, I was blindfolded and handed my iPod to listen to, then guided to the car and placed inside. I had some suspicions about what we were doing, and I thought camping might be involved, but I had no idea where or for how long or anything.

After about half an hour in the car, Jacob said I could either remove the blindfold then and enjoy the scenery, or I could wait until we arrived at our destination. I took off the blindfold to see the beautiful countryside outside of Ashton, and was informed that we were on our way to Mesa Falls, Idaho! Which was extra-awesome, because it's been on my list to visit all summer. =)

We camped for one night, enjoyed the scenery, talked, got eaten alive by mosquitoes, almost got rained on but then didn't, ate tinfoil dinners and s'mores, and enjoyed being surrounded by God's beautiful creations. Jacob had gone to his parents house to prepare a few things, and his family told him that under the circumstances, they wanted to give him his birthday present early...because it was a tent and two sleeping bags! And what a lovely tent it was too. Without the rain-cover, three full sides of it are mesh, so it's like being all kinds of outdoors without being eaten by the 4,000 bugs that kept attempting to feast on us. We're excited to put the tent to use for the rest of the summer. We also had such a great time being in nature, and are so blessed to live in this incredible place, that we decided that every Saturday from now until the end of the summer will be spent doing something outdoorsy. =)

And now here are some pictures.

(You like the optical illusion in this top-left picture? Jacob appears to me taller than me! In reality, we're about the same height.)

We also decided that even though we're in love, making out while covered in sunscreen, bug repellent and dirt is one of the least romantic things in the world. So we made up for it when we got home.