Happy birthday to my wonderful husband!! He is 37 years old today. This year has been life-changing and I am so proud of how much he’s grown this year.
Happy anniversary!! Today marks 10 years of marriage. It’s been a beautiful 10 years and I hope for many, many more!
Reverb has another really good prompt today. I can’t resist answering it.
Considering the idea that nothing lasts forever: what was the most important relationship that you fostered in 2012?
How will you continue to nurture it in 2013?
My husband is the love of my life. We’ve been married for over seven years and I am so incredibly grateful to God for bringing us together. The first couple years of our marriage were tough as I battled some old abandonment issues. But my husband meant what he said in our vows – he has stuck by me no matter what has happened.
This year, I spent over two months in Michigan helping my husband’s parents. Before that trip, we had only been apart for a week. By the end of my stay in Michigan, I was desperate to get back to him. Even though I knew that I was needed in Michigan and happy to help, I missed my husband something fierce.
Every so often, I have to remind myself what it felt like to be apart. It’s so easy to take my husband for granted because he works from home and we are around each other almost 24/7. Sometimes my selfish nature emerges and I want things my way. I can be short tempered and take advantage of my husband’s very giving nature.
In 2013, I want to continue to deepen our relationship. I know that I have flaws, that human nature is to be selfish, but with God’s help, I hope to become a better wife. I love my husband more than I could even think possible and want to be the best wife possible.
I didn’t post yesterday because it was my husband’s birthday and our seventh wedding anniversary. Yes, on the same day. It was not intentional! We eloped and happened to have that day off work. But my husband likes to tease me and say that it’s “all Cassandra, all the time.” He says our anniversasry overrode his birthday. Plus, my birthday is only six days after his. We have all of our fun at the same time!
The vet called today with the results of Bruno’s urinalysis. Everything was normal! So far, Bruno has been an angel, no marking. I know it’s still too early to tell if it will be permanent, but I am cleaning like crazy to avoid him marking places he used to mark. Hopefully that will help. Our house is slowly starting to look less scary under the blacklight.
Not much else is going on. Since Bruno doesn’t have to go back to the vet anytime soon, maybe we’ll be able to afford an ironing board out of our next paycheck. Then I can start quilting again! Oh how I miss it.
Hub’s is working so I’m going to reply to a few emails. Ta-ta!
I had plans for this week. HA! They have been completely thrown out the window. There are a few things I still want to do this week but we’ll see how much actually gets accomplished. Supposedly, my hubby will be working at a client all day on Friday so I should be able to be very productive.
Tonight… we are doing something crazy. We are going to the midnight showing of The Adventures of Tintin! Then, first thing tomorrow morning, we are doing a 90 minute yoga session. I’m sure we could have timed these two events better, but tonight is the theatre release and my husband has been looking forward to it for months. He grew up reading the Tintin comics and was really excited when he found out they were making a movie.
I hope I’m able to achieve some level of coherency tomorrow! I’m sure we’ll be tired but it’s worth it to make my hubby so happy!
Starting up the trail
We’re hiking up there?
Almost to the cave!
Climbing down through the cave entrance
Hubby looking amazing
Tiny tunnel I was crazy enough to crawl through
What’s on the ceiling?
Cool formations!
Massive stalagmite
It’s taller than I am!
Most of the spelunking group
Light at the end of the tunnel
Colorful bug
Hubby and I at the top of the trail
View from the top
Hiking back down
Souvenirs!
Please forgive me for gushing about my husband for a moment. See, today is his 32nd birthday. It is also our 5th anniversary. It was not intentional that we were married on hubby’s birthday but I had taken a vacation day to surprise him and we ended up eloping.
I am so grateful to God for placing such a wonderful man in my life! My husband balances me. Where I am rash, he is thoughtful in making decisions. His laid back ways are perfect for countering my go-go-go attitude. We don’t always see eye to eye on decisions, but we’re a good match.
I love how my husband is thoughtful, kind, loving, sincere, and level headed. He loves me even when I don’t like myself. I am so blessed!
This year I’m doing acts of service for his birthday gifts. Hubby is working tonight and we’re not sure what time he will be done. I promised him I’d stay up and have dinner ready for him when his work is finished. He had a hard time picking an entree for his birthday dinner but he was very quick to request pumpkin pie for dessert! I have a homemade one baking as I type this.
When trying to decide what I was going to surprise him with as a gift, I thought of his desk. The poor man puts up with my clutter. Somehow, tons of my paperwork, notes, and various other items had drifted over to his desk. I thought it would be a nice surprise to clean up our game shelf, remove the games we never play, move the movies to the newly open space, and dust his desk. It’s so cluttered (with my junk!) that it’s gotten pretty dusty.
I’m a sucker for Before and After pictures so I took some. This first photo is of our game shelf and I was half way done cleaning the middle shelf before I remembered that I wanted photos for my blog post. Oops!
(Hopefully hubby isn’t embarrassed by me posting photos of his desk, but the mess is mostly mine!)
We sold the tiny bookshelf we used for storing movies and video games so they all ended up piled on the back of hubby’s desk.
And here is the front view of hubby’s desk. Now that I can see the After, I can’t believe he was willing to put up with it! But he didn’t complain, other than to occasionally offhandedly mention that his desk was getting kind of bad.
And here is the After photo of our game and video shelves. The top shelf isn’t really organized yet but I wasn’t sure how much time I would have before hubby came home. I’ll get to it eventually.
Here’s the back of hubby’s desk now that almost all of the videos are moved. He likes using a boxed set of DVDs to keep the speakers taller than the monitors.
Lastly, the front of hubby’s desk. SO much better!
Hopefully he likes it!
I woke up in an incredibly bad mood. There’s no excuse for it, though I could try. There’s just no excuse.
Hubby ran to the store for a couple grocery items and came back with a surprise.
There is no way I deserved these and I was really humbled. My hubby is so sweet.
I had grandiose plans for today. Haha. Best laid plans? There’s a text somewhere in the New Testament that talks about people making plans and how they should say “IF the Lord wills, we will do such and such.” That was basically my morning.
Hubby has been working late nights and I’ve been staying up to keep him company. I think last night we went to bed around 11. I woke up at 6 and stumbled out to the living room. After nearly falling asleep just sitting on the couch, I decided I needed to go back to bed. I promptly passed out for another two hours.
After getting up, hubby was immersed in phone calls with clients. During that time, I ensure that the clients can’t hear me in the background. That means I don’t have much I can do. I can either read or do something on the computer or… that’s about it.
Around 10:30, I finally got my chance to make cookies. Yay! The batter mixed up really well. It smelled great. It baked nicely. And… my peanut butter cookies didn’t taste like they contained peanut butter. They were pretty good, just not peanut butter cookies. Some of the reviews mentioned that, but other people said they tasted great. I will either have to continue looking for the perfect peanut butter cookie or tweak this one so it tastes like peanut butter.
I realized how poor some of the quality of our ingredients is. The cookies are supposed to be sugar free, other than what is in the tiny bit of maple syrup. My cookies were not sugar free. The maple syrup (fake, cheap stuff) contained high fructose corn syrup. The almond milk had added sugar (I didn’t know that!). And the peanut butter had added sugar! I thought I had bought a natural peanut butter without added sugar. I guess not… So much for sugar free cookies!
My kitty is sick, I think. He’s been hot to the touch since yesterday. He’s extremely clingy and really likes sleeping on my pillow when I’m in the bedroom. Poor baby. 🙁 He’s eating a bit less than normal, but still eating. I’m just going to watch him and see if he gets better on his own. I really don’t want to take him to the vet and get him shot up with medication. Hubby reassured me that we will spend money to take him to the vet if it comes to that. I just want him to feel better!
I hope this post doesn’t sound all doom and gloom, because I did have a good day. It just wasn’t what I expected!
I’m going to make peanut butter cookies for my hubby first thing tomorrow morning. Shhhhh… Hopefully he won’t find out until they’re coming out of the oven!
Today’s been an interesting but fairly laid back day. I went to bed last night at 8:30 and woke up this morning at 7:30. For some reason, I’ve been needing a lot of sleep lately. Yesterday I woke up before 6 and had most of my housework done before 9! Today I was still eating breakfast at that time.
I had an awesome banana/strawberry/spinach smoothie for breakfast. Then I completed all of my housework. After that, I spent over an hour studying Japanese. Then I took a nap. haha. For some reason, despite my 11 hours of sleep last night, I needed an hour and a half long nap. Bummer. There went my afternoon!
Hubby is working tonight. He’s doing something server related for a company, which means he has to work during that company’s off hours. He’s scheduled to work from 10 to 6:30 tomorrow morning, but thankfully, he’s working from home. I thought about staying up all night to keep him company but hubby said he’d rather I got a good night of sleep tonight and was available and cheery for him tomorrow. I get a bit grumpy when I haven’t had enough sleep…
So that was my day. Productive in the morning and not so productive in the afternoon. I really wanted to quilt today but it just didn’t happen. I need to set aside some time for it like I do with my Bible study and my Japanese studies.
My Bible study still continues with the topic of death and what happens after death. I thought I was coming to the end of my texts, but one text today gave me six more to study! I just follow all the cross references and now I have pages of texts. I still have two pages of texts to look up but who knows how many more texts that will provide. I had no idea that the Bible said so much about death.
My Japanese studies are going really well also. I’m planning on taking the JLPT N5 this December, which is the easiest proficiency exam. Theoretically, I could push myself to take N4 but I’m not sure I’ll be ready. I want to pass so that I have motivation to study next year. For me, failing is unmotivational. I’ve learned a bunch of vocabulary plus the following sentence structures:
it is…
it was…
it is not…
it was not…
I am…
I still don’t feel like I could carry any sort of conversation in Japanese but I’m starting to understand sentence structure and some of the vocab in Japanese movies. Maybe next year I’ll be able to watch something without the subtitles!