the first year

today is our first year anniversary - happy year I to us !!

the traditional gift material for year one of marriage is paper, so we decided to buy tickets to universal studios and spend a warm sunny day with our friends onki and annie at the amusement park.

susan woke up early to work in the hospital for a few hours, then we drove 20 mins east to studio city. the big rides are back to the future, the mummy, jurassic park, terminator and shrek. the studio tour was a classic, a tram ride to the active part of universal studios, where we saw the set for deperate housewives (wisteria lane), war of the worlds (an incredible disaster scene complete with a torn apart wide body airplane) and others. along the way, we were attacked by king kong (arguably the biggest star in hollywood) and jaws (which hue remembers from his visit more than a dozen years back). it was great fun, and of course we ate well too. we hung out at the citywalk for dinner and had tapas at this place called cafe tu tu tango.

we have other "ticket" plans for the upcoming year, but you'll hear about it over time, we're sure of it.

be sure to check out the knot weddings magazine (michigan: fall/winter 2005). we've got a small picture and description of our wedding on page 68.

one other item to mention- when we married, we chose traditional vows to recite before God, but our pastor also asked us write our own personal vows in the form of a letter to each other to help us prepare for marriage and so that he could incorporate them in his wedding sermon. it was such a great experience that we have decided that for every anniversary, we would write a new set of vows to each other to celebrate the year. we won't print them here of course :-) but we do recommend it for other couples as a way to reflect on your relationship.