Staring at my garden of weeds and up-prepped raised beds the other day (and secretly burning with equal parts jealousy and admiration at the people in the complex who are raised bed geniuses with mini-greenhouses going and seeds sprouting back in February, but I digress), I was hit with the vague notion that I used to do something productive regarding the yard. It involved growing things, recording progress, taking photos, and displaying them online. Oh yeah, the blog.

Nearly a year has passed since we posted. What happened at that time? I pondered, looking at the May 2013 time stamp. How did we fall off the wagon so thoroughly after being so enthusiastic? Certainly these were thoughts never before had by anyone in the history of the internet who had once fired up a fresh blog full of hope, promise, and good intentions.

We got married in July.

The window of time between May and July 13th of last year is still a blur. Engaged in December 2012, Robin and arranged what probably counts as a shotgun wedding set seven months from the day we announced the news to the family. This terminology was appropriate not because I was pregnant (I definitely wasn’t) but because we approached the wedding planning process with all the organization, tactical alignment, and precision of a sawn-off shotgun.

Despite deciding early on to have a micro-wedding with only essential family members and a couple of representative friends in my parents’ backyard, somehow the whole debacle still turned into a multi-month time suck. Being both frugal and stubborn, we tackled the day with an approach that I now reflect on as “woefully DIY.” We did it all: wrote the ceremony from scratch, got Robin’s brother ordained, arranged the flowers, prepared a metric shit ton of food, and baked and decorated the cake. I made the decorations, and did my own hair and makeup due to a salon run-through so hideous that only now am I able to see the vague potential for hilarity in the situation. Too soon. It’s still too soon.

But, The Day came and went, and it was sunny, beautiful, and precisely what we wanted it to be. Robin and I were valiant competitors in the quest to make the other sob more with our vows–we both ended up champions in that regard and declared a tie–and despite Robin getting some lime-squeezing and sweet potato chopping PTSD from prepping all the food and me crafting my fingers raw, we emerged from the wedding hurricane pretty much unscathed. Post-ceremony photos definitely reveal equal parts happiness, shock, and fatigue.

We shuttled ourselves off for a week-long honeymoon in Neskowin, and immediately began an aggressive summer schedule of hiking and backpacking trips. The blog gathered dust, since we were too busy off having new adventures to report on the old ones. But now, on the cusp of a new backpacking season, we’re getting caught up on 2013’s trips so there’s momentum going into fresh reports.

Yesterday, Robin finished a nearly 30 mile hike. While he was laid up in bed, I read him our trip report from the same day exactly a year ago–March 24–where we bemoaned the state of our legs after a five mile hike. We laughed and laughed because it’s so easy to forget how far we’ve come in just a year, and that post reminded us just how important it is to have a log documenting our progress and reminding us of details that might be otherwise lost. Onward!