Lincoln Park Zoo Date!

Our first big adventure in the land of Chicago was to head to the Lincoln Park Zoo...which was exceptionally exciting for two reasons: it was free...and it contained Christmas lights. Yes please!!!

We'd thought about taking the train from Schaumburg, where we stayed, into the city, but we were new to the train thing and the thought of trying our maiden voyage at night just sort of seemed like a recipe for disaster, so we elected to drive.

While it was not without its issues...

...it was a fairly uneventful, and Ryan did a great job getting us there safely.

We had to park about a mile from the zoo, in a parking garage, and we were really excited about it, because it was well-lit and seemed very safe. For the girl who watches wayyyyyyyyy too many Lifetime movies and Dateline documentaries, this was very good news.

We bundled up and walked to the zoo on a relatively gorgeous December Chicago evening.

I think it's pretty amazing that this zoo has free entry - and man, was it ever gorgeous all decorated for Christmas. I can't even imagine the hours it took to put up all the lights in the trees!

We were pretty chilly early on - so we stopped by the fancy pants hot chocolate stand and got peppermint {Ryan} and caramel turtle {me} hot chocolates. They were SO GOOD!!!

We made our way through the zoo, enjoying the music, the lights and the atmosphere in general.

We even found a really cool architecture thing with the city in the background and had fun with some photo opps...and other fun angles of the city skyline.

They have a farm section in the zoo, as well, so we paid a visit to that area. Ryan, who grew up on a farm, had some opinions. LOL!!!!

 They had a barn where you could help feed the cows, so Ryan returned to his roots....

 And I tried my hand at it too!! {I had the camera on the wrong setting - hence the blur. My fault!!!}

After we looked through all the zoo, we stopped by the last thing I wanted to see...ice sculpting! I'd seen this done on our cruise ship a year ago in the summer, and I loved it so much, I wanted to see more!!

We got there JUST when they were starting....

It was SO COLD, and there was a crowd gathered round, but I wanted to stay and watch! They were working on a penguin, and he had one little wing that kept falling off, so they had to reattach it multiple times.

 Cutest little penguin in the world!!

It was right about HERE that we got a huge surprise. A gentleman and his wife sneaked up beside us and told us we were about to see a proposal - and the ice sculpture was all part of it!!! They were trying to stay hidden in the crowd, but they wanted to take pictures!

Here's how it happened.

After sculpture was nearly done, the artists called out "randomly" to the crowd, asking for a volunteer to help them iron off the excess snowy powder. They "chose" a young woman and "allowed" her boyfriend to come up with her. They gave her the iron and showed her how to polish the sculpture:

 And as she worked on the front part, she uncovered something hidden inside:

 ISN'T THAT THE CUTEST THING IN THE WORLD!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

By the way, she said yes. :)

We saw a proposal last year on our anniversary trip too. Happened at the Colts game, down on the field.

Must be the theme of the anniversary trips!

We made a quick stop in the gift shop for a souvenir and then we trekked back to our car in the parking garage to come home.

Except....

...y'all, we LOST OUR PARKING TICKET.

If you are new here and do not know us, let me just tell you that I am ultra responsible and the only person I know of who is 50 times more responsible than I am...is Ryan. He is completely organized and never loses anything.

But there we were, at like 9:00 at night, in the dark, in the cold, in a parking garage that is no longer attended by a real person, ripping our car apart, looking for {and praying for} that ticket. We both combed through {and under} {and around} that vehicle more times than I can tell you.

I panicked. Not only was I looking everywhere for someone ready to kill us {stupid TV shows!!!} - but I just knew we were going to have to spend the night in that parking garage until someone came back to work the next day! Or should we call 911? WHAT TO DO???

Well, it turns out that at the gate, there's a nifty little button on the machine for folks who lose their tickets. Unfortunately it means you have to pay more, but it also means you don't have to get killed, call 911, or spend the night in a sketchy city parking garage!!

We were so rattled and so relieved, we punched in the address to go back to our hotel and started driving.

Know where we ended up?

TRUE STORY!

We put the wrong stinkingaddress in the GPS and ended back up at Dell Rhea's!! {Ryan said to tell you he was a little upset they were out of chicken. HA!!!!!} A half hour LATER, we finally made it to our hotel. What a DAY!!

Despite its rather eventful end, it was SUCH a fun date. So thankful to have had the chance to experience this with Ryan!!

Second Anniversary: Headed to Chicago, Baby!!

We just got home from our second anniversary getaway...a trip nearly as polar opposite {ha ha! get it?} in climate from our wedding trip as we could get. Got married in Siesta Key and spent our second anniversary in and around Chicago. While the Windy City could have been much colder than it was, it was no tropical getaway!

We had a GREAT time - many memories made and many this-could-only-happen-to-us adventures were packed into our little vacation-let.

Our adventures began Sunday morning, when we packed up the car and headed out on the open road. Of course there was car karaoke:

Our first destination was Dell Rhea's Chicken. Have you heard of it? We hadn't, until less than a month before our trip, when we were watching the Duggars, and Josh and Anna stopped there on their road trip from Washington D.C. to Chicago. Ryan, who rarely looks up during the Duggars, began paying rapt attention and immediately added Dell Rhea's to our agenda.

If you've not heard of it, they are famous for their fried chicken basket, and they're a historical location on Route 66. Their whole story is pretty cool...you should check it out on their site. It tells how they got started back in the 30's and then almost had to close when Route 66 changed and it was no longer on the main path...but how they've made it!!

Ryan ordered the chicken basket they're famous for, and I ordered the chicken tenders, and I do believe it was the best fried chicken either of us had ever had. REAL chicken. Not fake chicken like we eat most places. :) And the biscuits - YUM!!!!!!

The menu says if you order the chicken basket, you should be prepared to wait 30 minutes to eat. They bring you the biscuits to keep you from starving to death while you wait. :) While we didn't have to wait anywhere near that full 30 minutes, we did find it very amusing that the family at the table next to us didn't so much have inside voices. The wife talked at length about texting Mary and Skyping with the husband's mom that afternoon - and a host of other things. So after meeting the table neighbors via eavesdropped conversation, our food arrived!!

We only ate half that and took the rest with us for later!!

After we left there, we headed to Schaumburg, Illinois, which was our home for the duration of the trip. We'd tried to find a hotel in downtown Chicago, but the price was three to four times as much per night as it was in the outskirts. So we sacrificed the view to stay in the burbs. Seriously stayed all three nights for less than the price of one night downtown. And our room was VERY comfortable, I might add. Not like our trip to Holland, when we started out in the communicable disease room.

I want to tell you about our trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo, but I fear that would make this the longest blog post known to man, so I'm going to call it quits for today - but come back tomorrow, because you won't want to miss that story!!!

Decking Our Halls!!

I'm afraid I'm going to get so busy telling you about our anniversary that I'm going to forget to tell you about decking our halls this year!

Confession: wasn't feeling it this year, and here's why. I have backed off telling you guys about our house drama, because I think some of you might have been a little sick of hearing about it. Trust me: not half as sick as we are of talking about it! Recap: We signed an offer on Ryan's Greentown house on JULY 22 and it has STILL not closed. The lenders and underwriters are still taking their sweet time, which is anything but sweet to the rest of us. We got a call from our realtor earlier this week saying we could still close by Friday, but at this point the loan STILL isn't approved. Maddening doesn't even begin to cover it. If you prayer warriors out there want to step it up with us and beg God to remove whatever obstacle has been in the path for almost five months, we welcome you to join us.

Praying about that house and holding our breath and waiting every single day for good news has literally sapped all the life out of us. We are becoming old before our very eyes. And I was too exhausted to even think about taking stuff out of the attic and decorating the house.

And this is where teamwork rocks. Ryan had to work the day after Thanksgiving, so while I was home moping about the house drama and my lack of desire to decorate, he was busy bringing home the bacon. And when he came home, bacon in hand, my knight in shining Christmas hat marched himself into the attic and retrieved all the tubs...and suddenly, my Christmas spirit returned! With his help, we were able to knock out the decorating!

Of course...Braeya helped.

And then she was done.

A little tree in the dining room - with some gingerbread ornaments on it...

Of course, the mistletoe:

And some teamwork:

All that, plus a whole lot more, led to some of these sights that just make my heart happy:

In a rare moment of outside the box thinking {or is this technically INSIDE the box thinking???} I repurposed my recently acquired Barnwood Tray into a stable for my little nativity. This may have been my favorite new thing this year. 

And I still love seeing this name on a stocking in the house I live in. In the background, the tiny wooden tree Ryan's mom gave us shortly after we were married. It stays out year round.

 Ryan gave me a cloche jar for Easter...and I decided to fill it with round ornaments this year. Love it!

 Some more clearance gingerbread items I found on a 90% off sale after Christmas last year. Love them!

 Living room tree is back to blue and gold this year: the colors that were prominent at our wedding.

 My goal: to have a picture frame for every Christmas with our "official" Christmas photo in it. This was a gift from my friend Amy last year. She sparked a tradition!!

 The lights don't stay on this tree very well, so I put them UNDER the tree.

 Another favorite this year: our first two Christmas cards, framed, the rose Ryan gave me when he proposed, the "S" he gave me for Valentine's Day this year, and the Kesot family Bible; I inherited it from my grandparents. It's open to Luke 2. {It's also the Bible in the photo on the front of my Advent book.}

 Ryan's Colts tree - in his bathroom!

There you have it! Shafferland is ready to go for Christmas 2014!!!!

Our Second Anniversary

My heart overflows to write those words. Our second anniversary.

Our golden anniversary. The second anniversary on the second day of the month. 

Last week, I got an email from one of you who thanked me for sharing about all the prayers I prayed...even before I knew who Ryan was. I stand on my firm conviction that every prayer and every tear and every brokenhearted moment of waiting was well worth the reward that Ryan is to me. The beautiful redemption from the hurt I went through. And today, we both celebrate the love God has allowed us to share for two full years now.

Last year, on our anniversary, we made a list of goals for our year ahead. I took a look at that list the other day, and I can see that God's plans for our year looked really different from our own. But despite that, it has been a marvelous year in so many ways, not the least of which was...we spent it together.

 {Yes, that's us with our beloved coffee on the second day of every month this year.}

Last year, on our first anniversary, I shared with you some of my favorite highlights of our wedding day. Today I bring to you some of my favorite moments of this last year we've shared.

While I didn't really love anything about the Polar Vortex of 2014, I did love playing in the snow with Ryan. We built a snow-son and named him Jeffrey...had photo shoots, made snow angels, and enjoyed warming up by the fire after it was over. And Ryan even risked life and limb in the snow to get us fountain pops, which is nearly one of the ultimate acts of love. This man is so much fun. Even on the worst snowy days, we had fun!

We had a staycation in February, which was a million kinds of wonderful. We slept, lounged in our jammies, watched the Olympics, drank a lot of coffee, had movie marathons, went to a concert, went out on some little day trips, and celebrated Valentine's Day with an Ultimate Float at DeBrand Chocolates. It was possibly the most relaxing week of our entire year and I cherished it.

I appreciate so much that Ryan is always willing to come to my work events with me. Every concert - everything he can possibly get to, he attends, and I love it. We spend so much time apart because of our jobs, so to have him make the sacrifice to come with me when I have to work on the weekends...is a joy. And sometimes there are extra fun perks in the fun perks...like getting to watch Kari Jobe sign this guitar and then having our picture taken with it because let's face it...we're never going to get near this many artist autographs again!

In all those years of waiting, there were so many things I wanted to share with Ryan, but I didn't know where he was! I love being able to continue to experience redemption by sharing with him bits of those things now. This year he accompanied me to the presentation of the Marion Easter Pageant, which was a HUGE part of my life as I grew up. Even though I wasn't in it this year, to be able to sit in the audience alongside him watch him experience something that was so pivotal to me as I grew up...was a joy.

It has been the theme of our year that things do not always turn out as expected or planned, and our birthday getaway was no exception. We planned a trip to Holland, Michigan, to see the tulips at the Tulip Festival, but alas, the Polar Vortex hung on and the tulips were not so much {at all} in bloom. Our hotel room had to be ditched because we had no idea if it bore communicable diseases, and the whole trip was one cold, cloudy potential disaster. But Ryan and I determined to make the most of it, so we soldiered on - donning our winter gear and taking beach pictures anyway. And you know what? We had a blast.

We tried our hand at a first this year - vacationing with family. It was a joy to celebrate my parents' 60th wedding anniversary with them - and with all my family - in Shipshewana. We laughed and shopped and ate and rode bikes and had photo shoots and had a blast! After all the celebrations I went to alone as I waited for someone to share life with, it was a joy to have Ryan be part of this one!

We love trying new things...once in a lifetime things...and this year we got the chance to dress up and attend a red carpet movie premiere - in Fort Wayne! Ryan was a trooper and put on a tie and walked the red carpet with me and watched the Hallmark presentation of For Better or For Worse - based on a novel written by the late Diann Hunt. Even though Hallmark movies are really not his thing, it was so fun to do something like this!

And just as I was excited to introduce Ryan to things that had been meaningful to me throughout my life, he was excited to share new things with me as well...like taking me to Holiday World! Never mind that all I could handle was the lazy river and the wave pool - we had a blast spending the day a the water park!!!

We had a dream-come-true day when Ryan got to join me on-air as a guest co-host on BLT. It was his first time back in the studio since the day of our proposal, and he did a GREAT job!!

 We celebrated everything we could...from monthiversaries to engagementversaries...and we don't plan to stop anytime soon! I don't ever want to slack off and forget all the seasons of waiting and praying. Time to celebrate what God has done!

And we did our best to make even the mundane chores fun!! We spent a lot of time this year working on the house - maintaining the work we've done and improving it wherever we can! And of course, nothing make raking more fun than throwing your wife in a pile of leaves!!

So that's been our year! Not what we planned - but no less joy-filled.


Ryan, thank you for this year. Thank you for making it fun even when the circumstances around it weren't fun. Thank you for wanting to spend as much time with me now as you did when we first got married. Thank you for loving our home and our life and our celebrations. Thank you for praying for and with me, and for desiring, every day, to make our marriage stronger and more meaningful. Thank you for spoiling me in all the little ways you do. Thank you for date nights and cuddles on the couch during movies and buying into my plan to visit all the counties into Indiana. Thanks for helping me document our lives and for seeing joy and hope in moments when I've lost my ability to do so. Thank you for leading us and for being trustworthy and honest with me. Thank you for loving me in all the moments when I don't love myself. Thank you for making this year one giant adventure. 

I'm so glad I said yes to you, two years ago today. It was my best yes.

 Looking forward to starting our third season of life together. Looking forward to answers to long-prayed prayers. Looking forward to new adventures, more laughter, and even more love.

You are my joy, and I cherish you!!

 730 days down. Forever to go.

You're the only one I want to spend it with.

Rebekah + Ryan from Visual Effects by Seth on Vimeo.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Yeah, yeah, I know it was last week. But I was so busy telling you about trees on Friday, that I didn't get to tell you about our Thanksgiving - other than what I mentioned briefly yesterday.

Ryan had Thanksgiving off this year {always grateful when he can have a holiday at home with me because when you work in health care, that is not a given}, and we had plans to start our festivities at my parents' house with my side of the family, and then we were going to travel to his grandma's house to spend some time with his dad's side of the family.

So we got up, got ready, and began making our contribution to the meal: stuffing/dressing.

It was while we were making this, that we got texts from my sister and her husband, saying their commute was NOT going well. They were traveling up from the Indianapolis area and had hit an area with black ice and slide-offs everywhere. She said they felt like they needed to go back home because it wasn't safe to continue. So sad!!

So we got in the car and headed to Mom and Dad's, with a lotta stuffing for not a lotta people. {And mourning the loss of the broccoli salad that was going back to Julie's house with her.}

Mom had a beautiful table set, and so much food. Oh. My. Word. The food.

I wanted this whole plate for myself, but there's that mean rule about sharing on Thanksgiving. Blah blah blah.

Ryan wanted the beets. TOTAL LIE. We hate beets.

We ate...and ate..and ate some more. So much good food.

After lunch, Mom gave us our anniversary present, and we had fun watching her try to use the fancy pants camera to take our picture.

We FaceTimed both my sisters, since neither could join us.

And the family photo with those who could make it {and the pilgrim representation of those who had to go back home}:

We stayed and talked and had a great time - but we didn't end up making it to Ryan's Grandma's house, so we felt bad about that!

One food coma later...we had another Thanksgiving in Shafferland history!