What does 37 look like?

It looks like this around our house.

This past Sunday your house may have celebrated Father's Day but our house had a double whammy.

You may recall a recent post about my inflexibility. Well about every 6 years it gets maxed out as I have to share my day w/ my dad AND NOW with Steve too. What's a girl to do?

Steve has always made fun of me (and my parents I guess) because growing up, my birthday was basically a national holiday. I didn't just have a birthday, I had a birthday week. One of the "perks" of being an only child, I guess. But I'd have to say this has made life rather difficult for my husband.

But before you go feeling too sorry for him, we did have a bit of a rocky start when we were first married. Ok, that's an understatement, he bombed it big time.

We were married on May 3rd. My birthday is June 21st. That same day Steve's sister Kerry got married. I knew that my birthday would take a backseat to the day's festivities and I was setting my expectations accordingly, but I did expect some sort of fan fare from my new husband.
Kerry and Mike had a beautiful wedding! And right before Kerry headed down the aisle, Mike had a dozen long stem red roses and a pair of diamond earrings delivered to the bridal room. Super romantic!

As expected, we stayed at the reception until late into the night. When we got back to Steve's parents house I subtly hinted at my birthday gift (probably by saying, where the heck is my birthday gift?). So Steve got all giddy and excited and took me into the garage where he hid it for safe keeping.

There I found a small gift bag with a yummy smelling candle (off to a fine start) and under the gift back was a large UNWRAPPED brown box. When I opened it I found a set of speakers. "You got me speakers?" "Yeah, surround sound! Pretty cool, huh?" Yeah, almost as cool as long stem roses and diamond earrings.

After we crawled into bed I couldn't keep it in any longer. "So, what made you think I might like speakers for my birthday?" A shiver of terror ran down Steve's spine...

"Well, remember how surround sound was on our wedding wish list and since we didn't use our wedding money to get it, I thought your birthday would be a good opportunity." Then the dam broke and tears started coming. I then proceeded to explain how my birthday was not the occasion to fill our house with "left over items" from our wish list.

Point taken!

Steve has grown a ton and learned a
lot about me since then. This year he did awesome and even provided me with a birthday weekend. Friday night was dinner and a movie, Saturday he kept the kids so that my friends could kidnap me for a special girls only lunch and Sunday he arranged a fun dinner with good friends at the Cheesecake Factory.

(I did not make my goal of funnel cake this week, but birthday cake will have to stand in the gap!)

As for my gift, we are going with some friends to a Diana Krall concert (he tried really hard to get us David Cook tickets, but with our adoption travel dates still up in the air, he played it safe.)

So, you live and learn. Some years you get long stem roses, some years you get surround sound. That's what makes this marriage thing so fun! And for now, we have a kick butt stereo system. All the better to watch Barbie's Nutcracker with!