Kevin and I celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary yesterday.
Twenty-two years ……………….. wow.
(Notice how we dressed up for this picture? LOL Hey. We’re keepin’ it real. Plus? We just took the picture and today is Sunday and we’ve both been busy around the house getting chores done. We looked much better yesterday when we went on our “date”).
It seems like I’ve known the man my entire life. In other ways, we just met.
Isn’t time funny that way?
We lucked out this year – our anniversary fell on a Saturday. And we further lucked out – the day was perfect. Hot, but perfect.
We spent the day together. Which doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but trust me, it was. Now that I’m working full time, we haven’t had a lot of time, or energy (on my part mostly), to really SPEND any time together. This has been quite an adjustment because we used to spend all of our time together every single day before I started working. I worked on school websites out of Kevin’s office back in the day – now I’m lucky if I even happen to be on that side of town.
I think my working has been great for Dude (setting an example and the simple fact that I’m not around to baby him anymore he’s forced to make his own life decisions), but I think it’s been hardest on Jazz and Kevin. I think Jazz may feel just a bit cheated since I was always there to pick up the boys after school when Dude was going to high school and of course, Kevin and I were practically joined at the hip.
Not so anymore. I pretty much disappear and am unattainable (unless it’s an emergency) from 8:30 to 5:00 every day.
So getting to spend the entire day together yesterday was quite a treat for us. We did quite a bit of shopping, actually. There have been some things we wanted to buy for a while, but we just haven’t had the time, or the energy (on my part mostly), to get it done. We started at Hobby Lobby.
I haven’t been to Hobby Lobby in … gosh, forever. And I’m always surprised to see just HOW many cool things they actually have. We were there probably close to two hours just looking at all the neat knick-knacks.
We ended up buying …
This little elephant. I don’t know, I have a thing for elephants. (Just wook at his wittle tusks … *squeal!) I ended up putting the elephant in our monster TV stand/cabinet (seriously, the thing takes up an entire wall).
We bought this saxophone player made out of nuts and bolts and put it in the curio case in our dining room. We bought it mainly because well, it’s cool and different and Jazz is heavy into his sax and it’ll be something to look back on and remember his high school days of playing the saxophone.
We also bought these wrought iron decoration thingies for our walls …
… in our dining room …
… and living room. We wanted something different. We’ve ALWAYS had a hard time decorating our walls. One, we’re just too cheap to buy any art (that stuff is freaking expensive) and two, we can never agree on anything. But these wrought iron deco thingies were on sale for half price, so we didn’t really pay that much for them and we figured we’d hang them up until we could find a painting/picture that’s within our price range and we both like. (We’ve only been looking for 22 years now).
We also bought this corner shelf …
We were originally going to put it in our dining room, but with the red walls and the black shelf, it pretty much disappeared. So, I suggested we put it in our kitchen and we’re going back to Hobby Lobby tomorrow to buy another one to put in the other corner. Now … if we can only come up with some ‘kitchen-y” stuff to put on it, we’ll be in good shape.
After Hobby Lobby, we went to Bed, Bath and Beyond (BBB). We’ve been on the hunt for new sheets for our bed. You would laugh if you saw our sheets. They’re paper thin and mis-matched. Since we bought our Tempur-Pedic mattress and new comforter set a several months ago, it’s hard to sleep under the comforter without waking up in a sweat. (And not just me, and not just because I’m going through the change; Kevin wakes up in a sweat, too). So we generally sleep under the sheet during the warm months, but our sheets are so thin that we now wake up cold.
We went to BBB yesterday hoping to find some decent sheets. First of all, WOW. Sheets are expensive. The good ones anyway. And we wanted something more than 400 thread count – something thick and comfy – like the sheets you sleep on when you go to a hotel. But UGH. The price. We ended up not buying them from BBB and on our way home, Kevin suggested Target.
We had been on our feet for several hours up to this point, so I suggested we go home, get cleaned up, go to Kevin’s office (I wanted to scan Jazz’s jazz band pictures – which I will post in a few days, and Kevin needed to package something up he had sold on eBay [we have the postal scale at his office]), go to dinner (we ate at Dave’s BBQ on Campbell and I had the salmon and broccoli – the salmon was so tender it literally fell apart – SO YUMMY) and then go to Target afterward.
When we got home, I jumped online and researched some sheets on Target, thinking I could get the same thing for cheaper. I found some Egyptian sheets that looked promising and they had great reviews, so when we got to Target, we headed over and checked out the brand. We liked the feel of them, but of course, they didn’t have any Queen-sized ivory ones so we ended up coming home and ordering them online anyway. (I don’t even know why I go to an actual store when I buy everything online anymore).
Then we topped off the day with a movie at home.
We don’t generally do a lot for our anniversary. We rarely buy each other presents, though we do end up buying something together for the house or for both of us. We are heading to Chicago in another week and a half and we’re justifying that trip as “part of our anniversary gift to each other.” I can’t wait!! We’re going to take some architecture tours and take lots of pictures. I just hope the weather holds up for us.
And I’ve been talking about taking a trip to Hawaii for our twenty-fifth anniversary ever since we got married.
Guess who’s been planning THAT trip? 😉
So hello year twenty-three – let’s see what you have in store for us this time around.
Write From Karen 