One Year Down, A Lifetime To Go!!

Well it is hard to believe Erik and I have already been married for an entire year. Our actual one-year anniversary was April 4th. It fell on Easter, so we ended up celebrating the following weekend. But man, what an amazing year it has been.

Honestly, it was one of the most stressful years of my life but one of the most rewarding. Erik and I bought a beautiful home in Nashville, TN. We had a blast decorating our house and making it a place of our own. But with a new home comes a whole lot of work. Especially when you have two people moving all of their things under one roof. Erik spent a lot of the past year on the road touring with Florez, and another large portion of the year traveling for modeling opportunities. I had to travel quite a bit for my job and when I wasn't working on the weekends, I was driving down to South Carolina to visit my family. I think we lived out of a suitcase for a majority of 2009 and really the beginning of this year! It was difficult on both of us. We had a really hard time moving all of our things into our house, some still remain in our garage in boxes. I couldn't lift a lot of the large boxes by myself. So we tried to organize and unpack whenever Erik was in town, but we never seemed to have enough time to finish. Although our lives and our careers are very fun, unique, and exciting... we both desired some sort of normalcy and structure. An "8 to 5" job started to have a certain appeal. Not to mention, I was really tired of doing the long distance marriage. The most consecutive days we spent together was actually in China when we first met! Kind of crazy considering we have been together for several years!

I also had a hard time being  away from my family. My mom has been fighting cancer since the Fall of 2008. When we found out, I had just moved to Nashville. It was hard being away from my family during that time. And it made it especially difficult when my mom lost her voice. Luckily she learned how to text and use the Internet but that is still not the same as picking up a phone and calling her whenever you want to check in. I tried to make up for the distance by traveling home on the weekends. But it was still not the same.

With the hard and trying times, I started to really appreciate all of the blessings in my life. Erik is the most caring, compassionate, and loving husband. I never dreamed of ending up with such an amazing best friend and life-long companion. We rarely argue  and seem to make the best out of every second we spend together. I have always had an adventurous soul and I feel very lucky to have found someone who shares that passion in life. We manage to keep each other entertained. And when I come up with crazy plans and dreams, he usually goes along with them and when my ideas are too far-fetched, he always remains my voice of reason.

So we hope this new year brings a little more simplicity to our lives. We want to take out some of the stressful factors from the equation and spend more time together. We are extremely blessed and I am so thankful for our first year as a married couple!