Today is our one year wedding anniversary!!! Rafael Soriano married Sarah Jo Soriano last year on January 31, 2010.

I can’t believe we’ve been married for one whole year. The whole thing has gone by so fast. We have had quite an eventful year. Rafael graduated from school and we bought a house. We managed our full house, I found out I was going to be an auntie again, he became a citizen… Blessing after blessing.

We celebrated with an anniversary weekend. We slept in on Saturday, then made our way to Pardon My French for some delish lunch. I had a lovely salad and croissant (because we were at a French restaurant, of course).

I’m not sure what Rafael had, but it was full of butter, pastry, chicken and mushrooms. And other stuff too, I’m sure.

We moved on to the mall, where Rafael and I picked out my anniversary present. It was time for a new coat! I was so excited to get one in such a pretty color.

We had ANOTHER tasty meal at P.F. Chang’s. Then we headed over to the movie theater where I got to experience another first with Rafael…His first 3-D movie! We put on the glasses for Tron. I don’t think the movie is going to win any awards or anything, but it was pretty fun to watch.

I gave Rafa his present tonight. It’s a journal…but I already filled up all the pages. with a note for everyday in the upcoming year. Here’s what the first page says –

“Dearest Rafael, I heard you are supposed to give “paper” for the first anniversary (weird) so here it is. This is a book of 365 reasons why I love you. These thoughts are to express my thankfulness for you, to provide encouragement to you, and to let you know how very much I love you!”

It’s been really fun to make this gift and even more fun to give it to him. Concentrating on the things you love about your man and the reasons why you are thankful for him make it really hard to be quarrelsome or quick to anger with him! This gift was for Rafael, but God used it to soften my heart in the process of making it.

As we are getting ready to wrap up our first anniversary, we have one more thing to do. It’s time to eat cake! Neither of us remembers eating any on our wedding day, so this is also a first taste test. We didn’t feed it to each other at the wedding either…think we should smash some on each other’s face?

Happy first anniversary, my love. I am so blessed and I thank God every day for bringing us together one year ago today. I got to say “I Do” to a man who is even more wonderful than my dreams. Our wedding was such a beautiful day. It was perfect because it was ours – exactly what we wanted. Thank you for making my dreams come true. Being your wife is even better than I imagined.