Two wonderful years! Here's a little song and animation I made for Erica for our second anniversary.

We're almost to our second anniversary and the fun hasn't stopped yet.

Perhaps you thought I was joking... but, no, we've decided that the first anniversary is matching clothing. So we stopped at Strange Cargo on Saturday and got these "Team Gerdes" shirts made and then headed north to Kenosha, Wisconsin for a delightful overnight trip.

Kenosha is perfect for an overnight trip because you can do everything there is to do in Kenosha in about a day and a half, and then it's an easy drive home to Chicago. But it didn't really matter where we were, as long as I could be there with Erica. It's been a year with, of course, ups and downs, but the whole time I've come to love Erica more and more. It makes me kinda mookey. Thanks, my love, for the best year of my life. So far.

We're coming up on our 1st anniversary and I'm not sure if you're aware that the 1st anniversary is traditionally matching clothing (look it up). Fortunately, my sister is aware of this. Thanks, Heidi!

Pez Heads, originally uploaded by Fuzzy Gerdes.

April 17th will be mine and Fuzzy's 3 year anniversary of being a couple. Amazing. Every day I am overwhelmed with how lucky and blessed I am to be with Fuzzy, and to be married to him, no less! I am the luckiest gal in the world!!

There are lots of Anniversaries to celebrate in the family:
Rachael and Don just celebrated their 40th anniversary in February.
Christopher and Katie just celebrated their 6 year anniversary together, and are about to have their 4th wedding annversary at the end of the month.
Mom and Dad are about to celebrate their 32nd anniversary.
Heidi and Marc celebrated their 8th anniversary a few months ago.
And July is on its way for Fuzzy and my 1st anniversary!

Congrats everyone!!

Merry Christmas from Erica and Fuzzy Gerdes, from our family to yours.

We kept extending our deadline -- first the end of August, then Halloween, then Thanksgiving -- but I am proud to say that we got all our wedding thank you notes written before Christmas. We're done! And I'm happy to say that we both wrote on every note -- we're in the marriage together, we should thank people for the presents together, we figure.

It's really been brought home to us during this whole wedding process that Chicago postal service is terrible -- so if you don't get a thank you note from us, let us know and we'll get another one out to you, lickety split. We want you to know our gratitude.

And a final "thank you" is due to Kate O'Leary, who drew the illustrations that we used for the front and back (above and below, respectively) of the thank you card.

My sister Jeanne got married in Cleveland a couple of weeks ago to a delightful young man named Jeff. All the best to them both.

Sure, Erica's dress was gorgeous, but it wasn't edible!

(via megnut)

The photographer who did Erica's most recent headshots, Johnny Knight, has been working on a series of photos for the last few years called Her Special Day that features brides in unusual situations. He's made a 2007 calendar with images from the series, which is available from Amazon. (Our friend Noah built the puppet-bride!)