Natalie & Ryan: Celebrate!

Today was a miracle in so many ways. The first was that I was able to participate in all and MORE of the activities that we planned to celebrate our one year anniversary. We had 12 straight hours of celebration. The theme of the day was reliving the highlights of our relationship.

We started with going to see "The Muppet Movie". Ryan loves the Muppets. The movie was awkward at times (I'm not really one for musicals), but it was really fun. The baby liked the loud noises, because she was kicking the entire time. After the movie, we went to the Salt Lake Temple to do sealings. I want to start the tradition of giving back on our wedding day each year. We did a sealing for a couple from 1770. They have been waiting to be sealed for over 240 years! It felt so special. Ryan and I kneeled across the altar, looking into each other's eyes and smiling, and it felt like we were being married again. I LOVE this tradition!

After some pictures on the temple grounds, which turned out to be quite hard because it was freezing after our late-night snow storm, we went to Olive Garden for dinner. This is the same Olive Garden that we had our wedding luncheon at. I've said it before, but I'll tell again why Olive Garden means so much to us. Ryan served his mission in Italy and said it was the closest to authentic Italian cooking, we had our first date at an Olive Garden, we had our wedding luncheon at Olive Garden, and we celebrated finding out we were having a baby by having dinner at Olive Garden. It's been our go-to place for celebrating. The best part about dinner was that they sat us at the exact same table that we sat at one year ago. It was awesome!

As if I wasn't already tired enough, we still had MORE. It was about 8:30 at this point. The last event of the night was going to see the show "Laughing Stock" at the Off Broadway Theater. This is where we went for our first date. It's a live improv show, modeled after our favorite TV show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". The announcer asks for suggestions from the audience for themes of the skits, and then the actors act it out. For one of the skits, he asked for the name of a celebrity. The first thing that came to my mind was Gary Busey, so I yelled it out. Well, it got picked! The show went over by 20 minutes because the actor couldn't guess that the other actor was pretending to be Gary Busey. Apparently people don't really know who Gary Busey is...well, they would for sure know him by looking at a picture, just not by name. Anyway, I thought it was hilarious that I stumped the actors. We had a great time!

We didn't get home until midnight. I think we were both snoring within 30 seconds of our heads hitting the pillows. I was SO thankful that my body held out and that I was able to withstand the full day of activity.