Well guys, the big one year anniversary officially came and went without a lot of hoopla or fanfare. I had expected lots of joyous, silly celebrating, but we had none of that.

And you know what? I’m perfectly fine with that.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re still going to celebrate again on Saturday in a combined celebration for my birthday and some other stuff.

We had some personal things that kept us from celebrating the way we would have preferred last night so we just decided to go out to a relaxing dinner, something fun and casual, and then save the real “special” stuff until the weekend.

(Although eating out on a Monday certainly is special on our budget!)

So on the one year anniversary of the day we got all dressed up and fancy and said our vows, we both went to work (or worked from the couch, in my case) and then some pretty awesome burgers that I tried to share with you via photo, but my phone internet isn’t cooperating so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

And then we went home.

We were full. We were tired. We decided to take a short nap before dessert.

Spoiler alert: We never made it to dessert.

We were both so tired that we ended up sleeping longer than we’d planned, and by the time we got up, we were still feeling full and weren’t in the mood for any more celebrating.

I’ll admit it, I was bummed.

I felt we’d wasted our anniversary. It was the only first anniversary we’ll get and we’d slept part of it away!

But then, as Hubs hugged me and I could see the hurt in his eyes because he thought he’d let me down, I realized it didn’t matter at all how or when we celebrated. Having each other for a whole year already and a lifetime to come is what we should be celebrating every day, not just today. That’s where the joy should be coming from. Not from a fancy dress or an expensive dinner…

So I cried a little bit and apologized. I hadn’t meant to make him feel bad. What a humbling blessing to be able to ask for forgiveness from the one I love on the day we celebrate the promises that we made to always fight fair and seek out resolution to our conflicts and struggles.

And then we settled into the couch to read our “Love Story” book that we started on our wedding day.

And we looked though our photo album. And we both got a little emotional as we relived those memories.

And then, you know what we did?

We read our promises to each other.

The ones we read during our wedding after we recited our vows. The ones that made pretty much the entire church cry, including ourselves, with how sweet and personal and perfect for us that they were.

And you know what?

We both cried again. More than a few tears on our cheeks. In fact, there were several, many even, tears running down our cheeks as we relived how passionate we were as we wrote and recited those words to each other last year and remembered just how much love and devotion and history and hope those words carried for us then, and how much they still mean to us know.

And you know what else?

It was exactly what I would have wanted our “actual” anniversary to be. It was real. It was honest. It was tender and sweet and private. We’ll save the silly celebrations for later. Those special moments were all about taking time to quietly reflect on just how amazingly blessed we are to call each other best friends…lovers… teammates… family…husband and wife.

And that was all the joy I could have ever dreamed of wanting for such a very special day.