Anniversary Gone Astray

I can't believe it was a year ago that all THIS was happening:

And it's crazy because I can't decide if I feel like we've been married way, way longer than a year and the people in this picture are babies who have no idea what's coming for them, or if it feels like our wedding was only yesterday and I am just WAY too young to have already been married for a year.
Originally, I was going to dedicate this post to pointing out all the crazy changes that happened in our first year of marriage. I was going to say how we had been through so much, and grown so close, and how we were looking forward to what the next year would bring. Aww.
But this was before we took our Anniversary trip, up to the same place we went on our Honeymoon. Now, you have to understand, we are not stupid: we are both well-aware that it is a law of the universe that when you go on vacation, not just one thing but many things will go wrong. We just thought we were exempt. We were above that rule. Because our honeymoon went so smoothly. The weather was great, even though it was early January. The car worked fine. We traveled safely. And voila we were back home.
So this year, we were oh so naiive. I truly thought it would go just like it did last year.

Now, I don't want to complain, because we have been truly blessed. We set aside a certain amount of money every week and put it into savings and then didn't touch it, and it was truly a miracle because if you add up how much we make and subtract our bills, we should be impoverished and starving, and I know it's only because we pay our tithing that it all works out the way it does. The problem is, we got a little too comfortable. We started making plans about where that savings was going to go, where we'd be in six months, a year, ten years. We were on top of the world!
And then, the storm hit. Hospital bills for me, doctor bills for Caleb AND Dega, both of our car registrations due, then of course Caleb's car broke down. Then it fixed itself. Then it broke down again. Now it's temporarily working and we're pretending everything is fine-just-fine. Then, the trip.
We were lucky my aunt & uncle just built a cabin not a mile away from the one we stayed in last year, which they let us stay in for free. So how could we pass that up? We made it three hours into the trip, and then in the last five minutes, my tires did a lovely pirouette across the ice, and we hit a snowbank.
(At this point, Caleb would like me to point out that the road we slid on was called Rainbow Road. If you've ever played Mariokart, you know it was inevitable, and we're lucky we only slid off the road once.)

Logically, I knew everything was fine. We were both unhurt. The car was running. Yes, we were a little bit stuck, but we were also as close as you can be to another person, so we were fine. The lodge nearby pulled us out, and we were on our way. But the Callaway in me was very upset. We do not like our cars getting hurt. This had never happened before.
Scratch that, this had happened A LOT before. My car has been hit a total of 8 times, and my old car had a tree branch massive tree fall on it in the middle of a calm, sunny afternoon. The difference was, I had never been IN the car when it had happened, and it had always been someone elses fault. (Except for the speculation that my car has a giant magnet in it, which is why everyone hits it when it's parked.)
Anyway.
I was trying not to be upset, because that's just stupid. Everything truly important was fine. But I couldn't help but feel bad for my poor car. I think Disney has made me humanize way too many objects, my car being the main one. (The second one, of course, my old toys. After I saw Toy Story I went in my room, shut the door, and announced, "You guys can come to life around me now. I just learned the truth.")
ANYWAY.
Everything was fine the rest of the trip. Actually everything went really great, until we got back on the road. It looked a little something a-like a-this.

Luckily, we got out of the snow before the bumper decided to just start to fall off and rub against the tire. It's kind of a terrifying noise when you're doing 75 mph on the freeway. So we pulled over, popped it back into place, and made it about another 5 miles down the road before the banshee screeching started again. So we stopped again, and my sweet husband laid on the side of the road in the mud in howling, freezing wind, and tried and tried to fix it. We made it about 20 feet with our twist tie contraption before finally finding an old rope in my trunk. That got us the rest of the way home, where we've been safe and warm ever since.
I originally intended to write this blog about how much I loved my dear, sweet husband and how happy I was that we'd reached this year milestone. But as I watched him fix our car, as he spent over an hour in the cold and never once complained, then got back in the car and treated me like a Queen, like he always does, I was just overwhelmed with how blessed I am. If I had been alone, I have no idea what I would have done. I hate to play the damsel in distress card, but throw me in a complicated situation involving car troubles, and I am no good to you. (Although I DID stand on the side of the road and glare at the semis who didn't get in the other lane. I felt like that was pretty useful.) I just realized how great it is that I have a husband to take care of me. Someone to go through these hard times with. Someone who will treat me good even when he's upset or frustrated or at serious risk of losing his fingers to frostbite.
I don't think I realized what getting married meant when I was going through it a year ago. I think I saw the fun, the playing-house side of it, the not having to leave each other every night and being able to grow old together. But I couldn't have seen these little moments, these trials we'd face, and realize how much I'd grow to appreciate what I have, let alone who I have it with. 
So yes, we have been through a lot this past year. It almost scares me to think what this next year could bring. But, ultimately, I never imagined I could feel this close to someone, or get to spend every day with my best friend. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing.