alan's birthday

alan's birthday is in february.

so is my mom's birthday, and my stepdad's. one of our out-of-town friends and six of my good girlfriends have february birthdays too. by the time you throw in valentine's day, february gets to be pretty exhausting. which is not really a good excuse, but inevitably what happens is that i never make a very big deal about alan's birthday. it's not his fault, and it's not fair, but for the most part he takes it like a champ.

but this year i wasn't having it. he's the most specialest person in the whole wide world and he deserves to be celebrated, especially on his birthday!

so i planned a surprise trip - i booked the flight and the hotel and i talked to his boss and got him a whole week off of work. i kept it a secret for as long as i could, but i ended up telling him about it on the tuesday before we left. i'm no good at keeping secrets anyway, but i also know that he likes to be able to look forward to a vacation.

we had a small birthday party for him at our apartment on friday night and on saturday morning we got on a plane to florida. we spent four nights visiting with my dad and my grandpa. we did nothing but relax and sleep in and go on walks and nap every day. we read a lot and didn't watch much television. the weather was blissful and the company was good.

after that we headed down to orlando and spent three nights at disney world. i had taken alan to disney world for the first time in his life the summer before we got married. we'd spent the day at epcot and it was the most fun ever. this time we had three whole days and two park-hopper passes and we went to all four of the parks. the lady at the ticket counter gave alan a "happy birthday" pin and we wrote his name on it with sharpie. i made him wear it every day, and every day at least one person wished him a happy birthday.

we spent the first day at epcot - we ate lunch in england and dinner in china and watched the fireworks that night. the next day we went on all the best rides at magic kingdom, and then we went back to epcot to eat dinner in france. on the third day, we went to animal kingdom in the morning for more rides and lots of animals and then spent the afternoon wandering around hollywood studios. by the end of that last day we were way overstimulated and beyond exhausted. we ate pop tarts in our hotel room for dinner that night. it was my favorite dinner of the trip.

i think we did a pretty good job of really celebrating alan's birthday. but most importantly, we got to spend an entire week just the two of us.

25 random things {i love} about alan

1. he learned to love cats. for me.

2. when we go out to eat, he always makes me a “perfect bite” of whatever he is eating.

3. he makes up ridiculous songs and sings them quite loudly all day long. these songs normally involve one or both of the cats or serve as some sort of strange musical narrative for whatever we happen to be doing at the moment.

4. he gets lost going to places we’ve never been before. and also going to places we’ve been a hundred times. he puts way to much faith into mapquest and google maps, but he tends to misinterpret or over analyze the directions they give us.

5. he gets incredibly hyper the second he gets home from work. as of yet i have never been able to explain this phenomenon, but it usually leads to bone-crushing hugs, loud noises, crazy cats, and above ridiculous songs.

6 he takes at least two showers a day. what sort of boy does this?

7 he. loves. statues. you should have seen him in paris. why was it that i didn’t even learn this about him until after we were already married? i’d thought i’d known everything about him.

8 he always puts others first. i mean always. sometimes i have to yell at him to make him be a little selfish. i, however, am very good at being selfish.

9 one time there was a plastic spider near him. he screamed like a five-year-old girl and hid under a desk.after that we started a game of hide-the-spider that continues (off and on) to this day.

10 you should see the way he loves his grandpa. it may be the sweetest thing in the world. he always says that grandpa taught him how to be a good man – a good son, a good brother, a good husband. and i must say that grandpa did a damn good job. (thanks!)

11. for some reason, he prefers fruity candy (starburst, skittles, gummy bears) to good candy (also known as chocolate). i love him anyway.

12. he’s my biggest fan (besides maybe my mom). he believes in me more than i do. he brags about me to anyone who’ll listen, but he never brags about himself. i don’t know if this is because he doesn’t know how amazing he is, or if he just doesn’t want to toot his own horn… but i hope that he knows how amazing he is.

13. one time in fredricksburg he drove a four-wheeler straight into a giant pit of the deepest, thickest mud you’ve ever seen. we were surrounded by giant man-eating spiders and we ruined our tennis shoes and we spent the entire afternoon trying to get that thing out of the mud. until then i don’t think i had ever once questioned his judgment.

14. he makes the best mashed potatoes in the world.

15. he doesn’t know anything about music. the only bands he can recognize every time are e.l.o. and boston. he once asked me if janis joplin's piece of my heart was a remake of a faith hill song.

16. he's never been able to say "lackadaisical" right. it bugs me a lot because i'm kinda weird about spelling and pronunciation but i think it's cute.

17. he likes roller coasters even less than i do.

18. he knows every single obscure random fact and rule about football in the entire history of football. he can tell you who won super bowl 22 and what the score was and what the most important play of the game was and which player made that play. and he will tell you all of these things as if he was there.

19. he loves the fact that i like to chase frogs and pick them up. one time i found a snake skin that had been molted and i thought it was fascinating. he looked at me like he wanted to marry me all over again.

20. he reads my blog.

21. when he's nervous or thinking really hard, he rubs his fingernails across his mouth. he doesn't even realize he's doing it until i tell him.

22. when we were in paris at luxembourg garden there was some art piece that he called a "big hairy tv." we sat in front of it and he put one ear bud in each of our ears and played les poissons (from the little mermaid) on the ipod and we drank a bottle of wine and sang along.

23. every time we travel he takes a picture of our tired feet next to each other.

24. he refuses to eat the last bite of a banana.

25. he loves me in spite of my flaws (and i've got a lot of them).

25 random things

this thing is all over facebook - if you missed it you're probably under a facebook rock. anyway i'm going to post my list on my blog, because, why not?

1. by the time i was in third grade i had lived in four states. i don't understand it when i hear about people who have lived in the same house since they were born. the longest i ever lived in one house was like 6 years. i've been in texas for something like seventeen years and i like it but i certainly don't want to live here for the rest of forever.

2. i had a... feeling about alan the first time i met him. which wasn't actually the first time i met him, but that's a long story. anyway i knew he was something special way before we even went on our first date. i knew i loved him after probably two or three weeks, and i knew without even the tiniest shadow of a doubt that i was going to marry him by the time we had been together for four months. (don't worry, we didn't actually get married until we had been together for 4 years.)

3. i took nine years of spanish classes. i could have minored in spanish if i had just taken one or two more classes but i really wanted to learn french so i took a semester of that instead. i love... languages.

4. four days after i graduated from high school, my ex boyfriend (first love) passed away. i cried for weeks. the painful, body-shaking, deepest heart-aching, horrible kind of crying that leaves you weak and wasted for a long time.
that was the day i grew up.

5. as a kid some of my favorite books were jumanji, the phantom tollbooth, and cloudy with a chance of meatballs. i loved the stories and the intricately detailed illustrations. i wanted to grow up and write and illustrate children's books.

6. i want to travel. alan and i have made a pact to try and go to one new country a year. in 2007 we went to france. in 2008 we went to mexico and canada, and the plan for 2009 is spain.

7. when we first got gubs, scoop hated him. he made the scariest noises i had ever heard and hid most of the time. he looked at me like i had served him up with the worst betrayal in the history of cats. nothing felt right in my world for a month. i was pretty sure i had broken our family.

8. i think i could be a really good wedding planner. i'm really organized and detail-oriented and i love all things wedding-related. my only real issue would be the hours. and the brides.

9. i love writing lists.

10. i was 22 when i realized that my mom was a real person and not some super hero. to this day it amazes me the things she has done, the sacrifices she has made, all... for me. it boggles the mind.

11. i believe that disney world really is the happiest place on earth. and i believe that colorado is the promised land.

12. i've done some crazy stupid things in my life. i'm not necessarily proud of everything i've done, but i'm not ashamed of any of it. i can definitely say that i've learned from my experiences and my mistakes. they're all part of who i am.

13. i hear horror stories about my friends' in-laws and i thank my lucky stars for mine. they're just so... nice. i love them all so much. i really hit the jackpot with this boy.

14. i'm afraid of flying, and public speaking, and elevators. i'm a nervous passenger. i have control issues.

15. i am shy, but only when i first meet new people, or when i'm in a brand new situation. once i figure things out and get a little more comfortable, i will open up so much that you'll wish i hadn't.
16. i'm a hippie at heart. i like pretty things and the color pink and i work in the most shallow and wasteful industry there is, but i'm a hippie. i don't eat meat, not because i don't like it, but because it's better for animals and the environment. i do all the inconvenient-but-good-for-the-environment things i can: i unplug electronics and appliances when they're not being used, i buy recycled toilet paper, i use eco-friendly cleaning products, i eat organic everything, i conserve water, and i use nylon shopping bags.

17. i'm a perfectionist. my mom always tells this story about when i was little and she was worried because i was at the age when other kids were learning to walk and i just wasn't. apparently i never even tried to. and then one day i got up and walked across the room like it was nothing. even now i don't like to do anything unless i can do it right the first time.

18. in sixth grade, carolyn and i went to an x-files convention in plano. we painted our nails green and wore our x-files t-shirts and hoped that, even though they weren't supposed to be there, gillian anderson and david duchovny would show up.

19. i met some of the best friends i've ever had in girl scouts in third grade. one summer, though, i went to girl scout camp and i hated it. i didn't know anyone there and it was my first time to spend more than one night away from home and i got the worst case of homesickness ever and one night there was a wasp in my bed and it stung every single one of my fingers before i woke up and realized what was going on. plus i lived in constant fear of ticks and lime disease for an entire week.

20. i think too much. about everything.

21. every job i've ever had i got because of a friend of mine. my first job was at contempo casuals, thanks to my friend gretchen. after that, amanda (from third grade girl scouts) got me a job as a hostess at on the border. then gretchen convinced me to work at chili's instead for a dollar more per hour. when i went to college i transferred to the chili's in denton. after a year or so there, my friend sarah suggested that i wait tables with her at hooters. i worked there for three years until i couldn't stand it anymore, at which point my friend chelsea helped me get a job in retail. i got my first job out of college because one of my favorite professors recommended me to a friend of hers who was my first boss. and i got the job i'm in now thanks to my friend jenny. i guess it really is all about who you know.

22. i think i'm a good person in general. but i want to do good things with my life. i want to go on mission trips again, and i want to do volunteer work. i've been so blessed and all i want to do is spread the love.

23. i love buying gifts for people - i love looking for the perfect gift for someone and then finally finding it and giving it to them. i love surprising people (but i don't always like to be surprised). i love birthday parties and cupcakes and slumber parties, too.

24. i'm not very good at accepting complements.

25. i've found my soul mate. it was an accident. i wasn't looking for him at all and i just... found him. and now all i want for everyone i know is for them to have what i have.