Has it really been a year?

Well it's not exactly to the day--the day was this past Sunday--but Jared and I have been married one year! It's hard to believe that just a year ago, our life looked like this:

I mean, for one thing, look at how long my hair was! But aside from that, I think we've done a lot of growing and changing. It's been an awesome first year. And we're both so excited for many more years to come.

This past weekend, we traveled down to La Conner, Washington for a little weekend getaway. We began our trip on Saturday morning. After finding the tiny town of La Conner, we drove over to Whidbey Island. First we stopped at Deception Pass state park to check out the views.

 The pass is actually the area containing the bridge joining Fidalgo Island (which I was not aware was an island--it's pretty well connected to the mainland by the highway and at low tide the bridge just covers a muddy area) and Whidbey Island. Who knew?

Whidbey island was amazing. It's hard to believe how diverse the landscape is out there--one minute we were driving through dense, moss covered trees, the next we were driving past fields full of sheep and lavender farms, all overlooking the ocean, and still in sight of mountains. It was gorgeous. We stopped at a couple little towns too. We spent a little while in Coupeville, a little town with lots of little shops and restaurants. They also had the most amazing churches. This is the United Methodist church in town:

And this is the Catholic church there:

You can't really tell because this is a bad photo, but it's a little yellow church with gingerbread trim--a regular little painted lady of a church (forgive me if that's inaccurate, any architecture experts out there). It was like stepping into a fairy tale for me, everything was so pretty!

We also did some shopping around La Conner. Lots of antique shops to explore, it was great. In the farm area around town we kept seeing these fields of some wilting plants. I thought they were poorly growing corn, but then we saw some wilted petals too...turns out they were tulips. Fields and fields of tulips. We kept seeing posters around town from past tulip festivals--next year we will definitely have to go down there when they're in bloom. Oh, and in one of those fields we saw two big old bald eagles just hanging out. They are some big birds. But anyway, after exploring town, we headed to our bed and breakfast--the Queen of the Valley Inn. It was out of town a little ways, overlooking a field of some very pretty cows. I also thought I saw a wolf in those fields...but it turns out it was just the B&B's resident dog. Oh well :) It was a beautiful little place too. 

Our room was pretty neat--it was the only one to boast a sunken jacuzzi tub room--which was a tiny little area under the stairs. 

They joked that it was their Harry Potter room. I loved it. 

On Sunday we went back to Deception Pass State Park and enjoyed a day of exploring. Right now wild roses and rhododendrons are in bloom, and so are these yellow bushes--I don't know they're name, and they're probably invasive, but I think they're beautiful :)

The first little beach we stopped at was awesome. 

 It was in a protected bay, and was so peaceful.

 And I had to test the water to make sure it was salt...it was. Uck. It looked pretty clean though :)

 The other side of the point had some tide pools. It was a protected area though--I guess a couple years ago the pools got trampled and almost completely destroyed by people visiting the beach. We poked around them a bit, following a rope path that the conservation club had mapped out.

 I guess the ones Jared saw on Vancouver Island were a lot cooler. The only wildlife we saw were a couple angry hermit crabs fighting.

 We explored the park more and found that it was a little point dropping off into the ocean with rocky cliffs.

 It was so beautiful, I could have stayed there all day. Or week. I'll just build a tiny little cottage on that point and stay there my whole life. And recruit my family to move there too--that would be perfect :)

 Jared had the camera, which is why there are so many pictures of me. You can see him in the shadows of some pictures though.

 Where it wasn't rocky, it was a cool little grass and wildflower meadow. And yellow is in season right now.

 Then we poked back up to the Deception Pass bridge. It was really a gorgeous structure. And of course, despite the signs--

--I bet you can guess how Jared got these pictures of the bridge.

 They are pretty cool, I'll admit...but worth risking his little red-headed neck? I'm not convinced :)
This is the looking-down view from the bridge. The water was moving pretty fast at that point.

After an afternoon spent reading snuggled in some rocks along the water, we called it a day--and a wonderful weekend.

It was pretty tough getting up, eating breakfast early in the B&B's sun porch and heading to work on Monday, but we did it anyway. The weekend was definitely a blessing and something to be truly thankful for, and I'm so glad I got to share it with Jared. I'm so excited for another year of adventures with him!