Happy Birthday To The Best Husband Ever!

Today is my husband's birthday, and I've been thinking a lot today about how special he is to me and how much he does for us.  I probably don't show or tell him nearly enough how amazing I think he is and how much I appreciate all his hard work.  I know that many wives feel the same way that I do about their husbands - that their husband has got to be the best one in the whole world and that they just happened to be the lucky one that snagged him.  But I just wanted to take a few minutes to tell you a little about my husband and publicly show why I respect and cherish him.

Chad wakes up pretty early each morning -  it's not in the wee hours like some husbands have to do, but it's still a consistent lack of "sleeping in", which he almost never gets to do.  He sets three alarms on his phone in order to manage this.  One of them is the sound of a duck quacking.  This is one of the many reasons why I love my husband. They go off in 15 minute intervals starting at 5:45am.  The first one is because he likes waking up and knowing that he gets to go back to sleep for a few more minutes.  The second one is so he can lay awake in bed for a few minutes and accustom himself to the morning.  The third one is so that he has a deadline.  So even when I keep him up til midnight the evening before talking about this or that, he still gets up and gets ready for work.  He never ever complains about this.  He doesn't even say, "I really don't feel like going to work today."  He never even thinks about making an excuse to stay home or go in late (despite my best efforts ;) hehehe), and even when he is legitimately sick, he goes to work unless it is something really really horrible that is keeping him locked in the bathroom.  He does like his job, and that does help, but he is not a morning person at all (at all!), so this is a big feat.  Let me tell you, I have liked my job before, but I still complained all the time about having to go there.  Even on the days when he has a million problems and is stressed to the max and he DOESN'T like his job, he doesn't complain.  This is a huge example to me of the determination of a husband who desires to provide for his family.  I know our children will witness this one day and it will shape their own lives and that is an incredibly special feeling.

So, almost every morning he kisses me awake somewhere between 6:30 & 6:45am.  He has to do this because I sleep soundly right through all 3 of his alarms (you have to remember I grew up in a house immediately beside a railroad track, and if you can sleep through a train that sounds like it's going to come barreling into your home at any moment, its horn blaring numerous times all the while, you can sleep through anything).  I almost never hear them.  (There was one Saturday that he forgot to turn off said alarm and then forgot to bring his phone back to bed with him and I awoke bolt upright in something of a panic, completely convinced that the noise I was hearing was our cat choking on something awful - like a thumbtack or other similar small, dangerous object that he'd managed to get a hold of during the night - and that surely I was going to find him lying dead or bleeding to death on the floor of our office where the horrible noise was coming from.  But no, happily it was Chad's duck alarm, quacking away incessantly, that I had managed to hear from two rooms away with both doors shut).  So when he kisses me awake, I groan and complain about how it's already morning, and he always patiently sits down on the bed beside me and hugs me until I wake up a little.  He does this almost every morning.  Sweetest husband ever.  It's one of my favorite moments of the day.  (This reminds me of a Zooey Deschanel quote which I assure you he's never heard: “In an ideal world no one would talk before 10am. People would just hug, because waking up is really hard.” It's true.)

I fight the urge to go back to sleep (even when Chad tells me that I should) and get up because I like to wave goodbye to him.  It's something I always saw my parents do and it just stuck with me.  He drives away and I wave goodbye, and he turns his truck light on so that I can see him waving back in the dark.  I love seeing him wave and blow me a kiss and drive off to the job I know he loves.  I know he loves this goodbye moment, too, because on the days when I'm running a little slow and don't quite make it to the door in time, he always sits out in front of the house for a second and waits until I get there, and on the few occasions that I am running REALLY slow and don't make it to the door at all, I always get a very nice apology text for whatever he thinks he's done to get him in the doghouse.  Poor guy, he is the absolute sweetest.

Not many couples get to work together, and I can see how working together could be an issue and in some cases create more problems than it would be worth, but I'm lucky to get to spend a few hours Monday-Thursday, helping my hubby out at his office.  It's not my dream job just going by the job description, but the fact that I get to be right there with my hubby makes it completely worth it.  I love to listen to him problem-solving, working out his weekly truck schedules - where to send his drivers, answering crazy detailed questions on the phone, making people happy, laughing at something funny that happens with his brother-in-law (my brother, Chris, also works at the office). 

I have such respect for what my husband does at work.  He contributes there in ways that no one else could.  He has a unique perspective and he has really helped to grow the family business that his parents started.  He's worked there ever since he's been allowed to work in his teens and has grown into his current position.  His normal hours are 7:00am - 5:00pm Monday-Friday, but I often don't see him home until after 5:30 and even 6:00pm or later some nights.  He also works almost every Saturday from 9:00am-Noon.  He puts in the hours and effort.  Chad and I are so blessed that his parents decided to start their family business because it has provided Chad (and me) with an opportunity to have a constant, steady job.  Chad has taken that opportunity very seriously, and put in serious time and serious effort into his position.  He does his job amazingly well because he has taken a ton of time and energy to build the skills required for it!  He almost never reads for fun anymore, but he will read manuals, financial books, articles online, and a ton of other sources just so that he can teach himself a new skill in order to do his job better.  He has worked so so hard for everything that we have and I am so proud of his work ethic.  50 to 60 hour work weeks are tough.  That is a lot of time to be working.  But he puts in the time with us afterhours, too. 

He doesn't just come home and crash.  We work together on all of our crazy house and yard projects.  He pays the bills.  He teases the cat.  He brings me home flowers and chocolates "just because".  He figures out how to fix the fridge himself when it breaks and there is water all over my kitchen floor so that we can save the money of hiring someone.  He has made 3 wise investments in rental properties that help us out, too, (1 of them is directly beside the business and will, sometime in the next year, be torn down in order to make way for a new warehouse that his growing business requires) but these rentals require even more time and energy afterhours and on the weekends to maintain.  He stops what he's doing to come pull things down from the high shelves for me even when he's busy doing something else.  He hangs pictures where I want them.  He mows the lawn every week so that I don't have to because I'm scared of our steep hills.  He gets the milk.  He fills my car up with gas.  He gets up in the middle of the night to check on the noise I thought I heard coming from the basement or to check and make sure the front door is locked.  He does all the grilling (I'm marinating Salmon tonight for his birthday dinner, and he is going to grill it himself because I don't know how and I'm afraid I'd blow us up).  He makes corny jokes all the time.  He is an amazing person.  I have an amazing amount of respect for him that I'm constantly working to show. 

Ephesians 5:33 (NLT) says: "So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."  That's the famous call for a man to unconditionally love his wife.  My husband does a great job of showing this to me, and I have to admit, I show him LOVE, too, all the time.  I always tell him how much I love him.  He knows I love him.  But God's call for the wife is to RESPECT her husband.  Just as a wife expects her husband's love to be unconditional, so should the wife's respect be!  UNCONDITIONAL. Even if he doesn't deserve it.  Even if he isn't respectable.  Luckily, it's extremely easy for me to feel respect for my husband because of all he does, and I hope I show it enough.  I need to say it out loud to him way more often.  Hopefully this post expresses the intense respect that I have for him, and would have for him, even if he didn't work or "try" half as hard as he does.

Everything isn't perfect all the time, just as nothing can be.  There are some sacrifices.  We don't get to take long vacations because of his work requirements.   I love vacations - a week long at least, to the beach or mountains.  I always did this once a year (at least - occasionally more than once per year) with my family growing up.  Not so easy to do now when Chad is part-owner of a business.  We still can take weekend trips - or maybe 4 days, but full weeks are hard to pull off.  Probably will be for quite some time.  But occasionally, if we plan it right we can still get away - Later this month we are going on vacation over Thanksgiving with my family in Gatlinburg for 4 days and Chad surprised me and rented out the same cabin we took our honeymoon in for 2 extra days! Count them!! That's SIX whole days!! One day short of a week!! I'll take it!! :) 

I'm so glad that I have the husband that I do.  I can't imagine a man better, more genuinely sweet and kind, harder working, funnier, and fun to be with.  And to top it all off, he's super hunky.  What's a girl to do but fall madly in love and follow him to the ends of the Earth?  I can't think of a happier love story.

First Flight: Florida Vacation!!

It’s a new year! And we’re already almost through February!  And sadly this is my first post since we switched to 2012.  I can’t believe how fast time flies! 

Speaking of flying… I totally went on my first plane ride a few weeks ago!  Chad and I left for Florida on February 7^th (Happy Birthday, Momma Frey!) and it was a quick 2 hour, 20 minute flight to Orlando.  

On the Plane!!

I was probably much more nervous about this than the situation warranted.  I’m a semi-expert on planes now.  I read pretty much every Wikipedia article I could find in anticipation of leaving and watched a ton of youtube videos people took of taking off and landing (which they were definitely NOT allowed to be doing).  I was pretty convinced something awful was going to happen.  My logic for this is that it feels like that every time I’ve tried something new, something goes wrong. (The first time I did the haunted house ride on a band trip, the machine broke down and they had to come lead us out through the emergency exits.  The first time I rode a roller coaster it detected something was off and we sat at the top of Apollo’s Chariot, 170 ft in the air, for an hour… Although, I will say that my first ride on Apollo’s Chariot was not as bad as Fabio’s) But seriously, I’ve never made myself that nauseous before strictly out of nervousness.  I really thought I was going to vomit right there on the jet bridge! 

Waiting at BWI

I was actually pretty nervous, too, about going through security, simply because I didn’t know what to expect.  I had this minor fear that something would somehow materialize in my bag that I wasn’t allowed to have, even though I went through my purse like 40 times before we left for the airport.  But anyway, that all turned out to be a breeze!  It didn’t take very long at all!  We flew Southwest (which is a really cool airline – the stewards are funny!) and they don’t have assigned seating, so I was nervous about getting a seat with Chad.  It was a full flight so there was really no room to spare.  We had a lower number “B” boarding pass so that let us board fairly quickly, but we still had to go almost the whole way to the back of the plane to get a seat together (which Chad said was a good thing because, “Have you ever seen a plane back into a mountain?”). 

It felt like it took forever to actually get in the seat and buckle myself in, but after the plane started moving, I felt much better.  It was just a crazy experience to be that high in the air, above the clouds.  Terrifyingly beautiful.  

I didn’t mind it much when we were moving steadily.  I didn’t like the turbulence.  It probably only lasted a total of 15 minutes but it felt pretty bad.  Chad said it was some of the stronger turbulence he’d felt before.  And I didn’t like it when the plane had to bank and change direction.  It made me feel funny in my head to see the clouds and the ground at such weird angles.  But, overall I didn’t hate it.  I’d definitely do it again, although I’m not sure how I’d do on a trip longer than 2 and a half hours… I was really ready to be done after that. Haha.

A family friend of Chad’s was sweet enough to pick us up at the airport and then let us borrow her car for the rest of the time we were down there so we didn’t have to get a rental car.  We stayed at The Beach Club Resort which is directly beside Epcot (probably half a mile walk), which was great because that was one of the places we were planning on going while we were down there.  Tuesday night, after we were settled in the hotel, we ate at Olive Garden and it was delicious! :)

Wednesday, we went to the Builder’s Show, which was the main reason we took the trip.  Chad’s business sells Eldorado Stone which is a large stone veneer company that usually has a booth at this show each year.  This year they provided the stone for the concept houses that were available to tour, which is how we spent most of our day there.  Wednesday night we had dinner at the Melting Pot, because I had always wanted to go there.  I love Chocolate fondue.  Love it.  So now I will do a quick (I promise) mini-review of the Melting Pot:

Atmosphere: Pleasant and interesting.  Our table was weirdly “L”-shaped and the burner was way up in the farthest corner from the seats which made it hard for Little-Short-Arms here to reach the food without dripping and dropping it everywhere before it got back to my plate.

Service: Very good.  The waiter was really helpful.  Since we had never been there before and it is such a different experience we needed a lot of help figuring everything out.

Price: $$$$ (that means expensive).  Their popular 4-course meal is $80 for two people.  Without drinks, or any of the optional specials, or tip.

Food: This is the big one.  The 1st course was our choice of cheese fondue.  We got the Spinach Artichoke and it was really good.  It comes with some veggies, bread cubes, tortilla style chips, and apple pieces to dip in it.  Although, honestly, it was nothing super special.  The waiter makes it right in front of you, and I really probably could have made it myself at home.  And it would have probably been more suited to my tastes, since it had a little kick to it and I am not one for kicks.  The 2nd course was a very good House Salad with a yummy dressing! :) The 3^rd course was about 4 to 5 bite-size pieces of each (and I stole this right off the menu – definitely don’t have that good of a memory) “Sesame-Crusted Sushi-Grade Ahi Tuna, Tender Shrimp, Seasoned Choice Angus Sirloin, Herb-Crusted Chicken Breast and Teriyaki-Marinated Sirloin”.  You then choose the “cooking style” you want which is basically a type of broth.  We did Court Boullion which was seasoned vegetable broth.  (Again it had a definite kick to it).  So anyway, they bring you out the meat raw and you have to cook it in the broth… I didn’t know that’s how it worked.  We weren’t huge fans of that method.  It feels like you spend a ton of money and then you have to make your own meal.  The food was definitely good, but it feels like a lot of work.  Didn’t think that part was really worth the money.  Anyway then the 4^th course was dessert, which was by far the best thing we had.  We chose the Cookies ‘n Cream Marshmallow Dream which was “Dark chocolate topped with marshmallow cream, flambéed, swirled together and garnished with crushed Oreo® cookies”.  YUM! They bring you out little Rice Krispies Treats, brownies, cheesecake, strawberries, bananas, pound cake, and marshmallows to dip in it.  It’s very good.   The nice thing about this is that so long as you don’t run out of chocolate fondue before your dippers are all, they will bring you out more of whatever dippers you want.  It is amazing.

So my overall recommendation of the Melting Pot is to try it at least once for the experience and then after that just go for dessert.  The chocolate fondues are $16 for 2 people - slightly expensive, but not too bad if you saved some money and had dinner at home!  It’s a very tasty treat!  [UPDATE (03.22.12): Chad and I just went to Harrisburg for the day a few weeks ago and had dessert at a Melting Pot there.  We got the same chocolate fondue and it was only $12.50, so price varies by location!!]

Okay, back to the rest of the vacation.  On Thursday, we went to Universal’s Islands of Adventure, which was probably the thing I wanted to do the most while we were there because I’d never been there before, and let’s face it… Harry Potter.  

It was amazing.  The Wizarding World of Harry Potter was packed with people, though.  Everyone in the park that day seemed to want to go to the same place.  

But I got to try a butter beer and go to to all the wizarding shops! 

We went all around the rest of the park, too, and went through "Jurassic Park" and saw a Sin Bad show, and rode all the roller coasters a few times!  It was very fun!  Now we are craving to go to Hershey Park or Busch Gardens (we have our 1 year anniversary coming up in April… Hehehe…) Thursday night we had dinner with a few people from Eldorado Stone at a Restaurant called Capriccio Grill which was at The Peabody.   I tried Seafood Pizza and Chad got a steak!  It was pretty yummy!

We went to Epcot on Friday and that was fun, too! Definitely not as many rides to do there, but we really enjoyed walking around the “World Showcase” and going in all the shops.  We had lunch in China. Haha!  And then we darted in some shops while it rained for 20 mins or so, and when it stopped, we walked back to the Resort to get some dessert.  There is an ice cream and soda shop there called Beaches and Cream, and it was delicious!

They also have a huge dessert called the Kitchen Sink which really does come out in a sink and it is basically every flavor of ice cream they have, covered in every topping they have and a whole can of whipped cream.  It looked amazing!  They brought out 3 of them in the half hour that we were there!  After that we went back to Epcot and went through the rest of the park.  We had a very small snackish sort of dinner since we were so full from our ice cream still, and then we went back to our room to get our showers for the night and just relax.  (our feet were killing us!! We did so so much walking every day!  We are out of shape!!) And then we made our way back to Epcot to watch the fireworks show which was pretty cool!

Our last full day was Saturday, and we just spent this day exploring.  We went to The Florida Mall and The Mall at Millenia, Disney’s Boardwalk, and Downtown Disney.  I wanted a candy apple, so I got that and shared it with Chad and it popped off one side of his permanent retainer on his lower teeth, so that sucked, but at least it happened on the last day.    

We also saw Chronicle, which was a really great movie.  We both liked it a lot!  Then we met the friend who let us borrow her car and her husband at Wolfgang Puck for dinner.  It was packed in that restaurant!! The food was pretty good though.  I got 4-cheese macaroni.  Then we went back to the resort and let them have their car back :).

Sunday, we woke up pretty early and got all our stuff together.  We took a short walk around the resort again and witnessed this:

Yum. Ketchup.

 

But we didn’t stay out long because it was actually really cold that morning.  It had been really nice the rest of the week, and in fact, I had a bit of a sunburn. Haha! We took a taxi to the airport and had lunch after we got through security.  I was much less nervous about flying this time.  The flight was pretty much on schedule and there was less turbulence overall on the way home.  I distracted myself by reading almost the whole time.  The landing was really bumpy because it was so windy in Baltimore.  But I just kept reading until we were firmly on the ground, cozied up next Chad and I was fine! :)

So that is our vacation in a nutshell!  We made a little pit stop on the way home (which wasn’t really “on the way” home… it was in fact a little out of the way… haha) to Harrisburg to pick up my “reward” for being such a good flier.  :) more to come on that in my next blog.  This one is already too huge!  (Hint: it has whiskers.)

A Weekend Getaway

Chad and I had been talking about going on a little get-away for a while now (well, mostly I’d been making vague comments about how I love taking vacations, and how I always had a nice vacation every summer to look forward to, and how everyone’s always updating their facebook statuses about being away on vacations) so Chad came home last Friday and announced that we were going away.  I love that man. :) We decided to head to the Poconos for the rest of the weekend.  On Saturday we went to Bushkill Falls (“the Niagara of Pennsylvania”!!) and walked some of the trails there.  That is a really beautiful place. 

The only downside was that a few of the trails were closed off because someone died while we were there.  We didn’t find that out until we got home, though.  We saw a bunch of emergency personnel while we were there, and Chad did some research after we got back to see if he could find out why.  So, that is really sad.  Definitely a reminder to spend every second we can with the ones we love. 

Almost immediately after we were done and back in the car it started to pour down rain.  And then it rained and rained and rained.  It rained all through a very good dinner at Olive Garden.  And it rained when we crossed the parking lot and went to Borders.  And then it rained when we drove back to the hotel.  And luckily there was an indoor pool for us to take a late-night dip in, because it was pouring down rain then, too.  And then it continued to rain all night long.  It did slow down to a nice drizzle for us to load up our car to leave on Sunday morning.  But then as soon as we were off, it launched itself back into all-out pouring again.  It rained when we stopped at a mall on the way home.  And when we ate lunch at Outback it was still raining.  And then we had to brave the rain at Wegman’s (which, holy crap, is most ginormous grocery store I have ever been in for reals!!) to see if they had any Jones soda (which they did, so we got 5 packs to stock up).  And when we stopped in at Cabela’s it was raining particularly hard.  And then we came out of Cabela’s and it was NOT RAINING!!!  (What!!)  So we were able to make a quick stop at a place called Interiors, which (obviously enough) sells décor for homes, without getting completely drenched for once!!  Then about 45 minutes later we were back home, and probably about 45 minutes after that it starting raining again.  Yep.  And then it rained for another 2 days.  So apparently it was following us. Hahaha!  I’m going to take it as a good sign.  It absolutely poured down rain on our wedding day, after all. :)

We’ve been spending a lot of time with family this week, too, which I love doing.  We had the normal dinners on Tuesday and Wednesday with each of our parents and then Saturday we went out to eat with Chad’s parents and then went back to their house and watched Inception.  And then Sunday Tanya came with us to Church and then Chris and Jessie had a cook-out-ish gathering for the rest of the day!  That was really fun and yummy!  We played a game that Chad and I got while we were away over the weekend called Loaded Questions.  We got it for a pretty good deal at Borders.  That was hilarious.  Very fun!  Also, I got to see their newish dog again, Pyro, and make him do some neat tricks.  He is the most well-behaved dog in the world, and he will do almost anything you tell him! Oh my gosh. I want one. :D

Okay.  Must resist urge to keep typing.  There is work to be done!  More towels to wash.