What I've Been Up to Lately

To be honest, I haven't been doing a whole lot lately. There's just this one thing I've been doing that's kind of taken a lot out of me...

Yep. There's a baby in there!

 

Our baby is set to arrive January 9. Now that I'm out of the first trimester, I have a lot more energy. I'm getting really excited about meeting our baby and becoming a mom! 

2 Years...Really!

Yesterday we celebrated our second anniversary!

I've found out several people (including family members who were at the wedding) thought we had only been married a year. No, it's really been two years!

Our first anniversary was also the day Nathan graduated from his MBA program, so that day was more of a celebration of him.

We didn't do anything crazy for our anniversary this year either. Nathan surprised me by sending me flowers at work, and we went out for a cheap dinner with a Living Social deal.

As cliché as it sounds, every day with Nathan is a gift no matter what we do. Two years later, I'm still excited about the fact that I get to see him every day! We have yet to experience that horrible "First Fight" we're supposed to have. Marriage is pretty awesome.

Life with a Puppy

Wondering how the impulse buy we made a couple weeks ago is doing?

He's fit in quite nicely for the most part. I think Nenya does actually like him.

She's still top dog around here.

This is my first puppy, so it's been an interesting experience with a roller coaster of emotions.

It's easy to be happy with your dog when he's being adorable sleeping on the love seat.

But when he's tearing up the love seat?

Sigh...that's a little more difficult to deal with. But I still love him.

We've had him eight weeks, and I've been doing training with him daily for the past six weeks. He's doing great at sit, lay down, stay, roll over, and has even mastered shaking. He's smart but super stubborn, so it's been a lesson in patience. He seems to be learning what's his and leaving our stuff alone, but we won't be leaving him in the house unsupervised for a few hours again any time soon. Although Adyn doesn't seem to have had any obedience training with his previous owners, one bonus is that he's completely house broken. We haven't had any accidents yet!

It was a little crazy in the beginning, but having two dogs has been good for all of us. I do think two dogs is my limit though!

An $8 date

We've made it a priority in our marriage to have a date every week. This may sound expensive, but our dates are rarely the traditional dinner and a movie type dates. In fact, the one time we did eat out and see a movie the same day, it was lunch and a matinée. 

 For our most recent date, we took a long walk downtown.

 We walked along the canal...

 watched the local animals...

had fun taking photos...

 

 watched part of a free concert that happened to be going on...

and saw parts of the city we'd never seen before, like the central library.

(It's pretty epic.)

And we just had fun.

We bought some sorbet at the mall, which was our only expense other than the unavoidable parking costs. 

 

It was one of the best dates we've had in a while!

A New Trek

One of the 12 things I want to tackle in 2012 is figure out my blog purpose. As you may have guessed by my recent lack of posts, I've been thinking a lot about that one. Here's my state of the blog address. I'll keep it short.

Wedding Trek
I started Wedding Trek not long after getting engaged as a way to document my wedding preparations. To be honest, my main motivation for starting my blog was to have something to submit to become a wedding blogger for Weddingbee. It soon became evident that there was no way I could write 3 good posts a week, so I kind of gave up on that. But I had a few friends and relatives reading by that point, so I kept writing.

Newlywed Trek
When I got married I kept on writing, but I never have had a true purpose for Newlywed Trek. I wrote some about learning to live together, dealing with our differences, and figuring out my role as a wife. While we're still learning and always will be, that initial adjustment is pretty much behind us. Does that mean we're no longer newlyweds? Possibly. But either way, I think it's time for a new name and new direction for the blog.

The new name? Our Trek
The purpose? Writing about our lives

Sometimes I skip writing about things Nathan and I do because I worry they aren't "blog worthy." This blog should be what I want to write. Although it's been fun to experiment with ways to grow my blog, my focus shouldn't be on my stats. After all, I don't make any money from this blog. I know it's possible to earn a living from blogging, but since I would rather continue to earn a living as a designer, it makes more sense for me to spend my free time building my freelance business rather than building this blog.

In short, all that's really going to change around here is the name of the blog and the way I approach it. Thanks for reading.