Happy Birthday, Betsy!

My precious, precocious first niece, my baby, is turning 6 today. I can't believe how fast she's grown. She was born 2 days after I got married, while I was on my honeymoon, so our meeting was delayed a little. From the moment I saw her, I was completely in love. She's a beautiful young girl, and smart and funny. She loves being the center of attention and being a big sister.


Until she was about 2, she was scared of MSH. He's so tall and has a deep voice and picks on her. Then, something changed and she decided that she loves MSH and loves for him to "get her". He is her jungle gym and a constant source of fun and amusement for her. She always asks to talk to him on the phone when I call. Daddy told me the other day that she loves to talk so much that when she runs out of true stories, she starts making them up.

She's such a sweet girl, too. Like I did with my aunts, she always wants to see what's in my purse, to have her face made up with my make up, and to use my lotion. Of course, I always let her, just like my aunts always did. This past Christmas, I took her Christmas shopping to buy gifts for her grandparents, sister, and parents. She picked out gifts with enthusiasm and real consideration for what each person would like. She picked out a French Soap for my mother, which I explained was soap from France. She later told everyone that she bought my mom "Soap of Ants". She even made sure to get something for her cousin Richard, even though he wasn't on our list.

Less than six too short years ago, she was my belly-baby in a bonnet. She still has the same big blue eyes, but she's lost the baby rolls. Now, she's a tall, slender beautiful girl, full of creativity and spunk. I can't wait to tell her that we're moving to Georgia and that we'll be able to see her much more often.

Happy Birthday, Betsy. We love you. From Uncle MSH and Aunt Me.

The imperfect wife

I'm terribly, terribly ashamed of myself and my husband. If you've read any of my blog or if you know me in person, you know I love my husband, and I know I love my husband, and I know my husband loves me. But yesterday, yesterday, I'll never live down yesterday. You see, I forgot and he forgot that yesterday was our sixth anniversary. I feel lower than low, lower than I've ever felt, terrible really because it never even dawned on me. I talked about it 2 weeks ago, then we spent 5 days in Georgia, looking at houses, and we forgot. I'm a week off, I keep thinking that it's last week, but that's no excuse. I'm just lame.

Yesterday afternoon, we're sitting at Firestone, waiting for an oil change, when MSH's dad emails him. MSH checks his blackberry and sees that his sweet father has wished us a happy anniversary. At which point he informs me that it is our anniversary, and I have to start laughing to cover the fact that I'm crying. I mean, crying in the greeting card aisle at Wal-Mart is one thing, but crying at Firestone without a huge repair bill looking you in the face is completely unacceptable. I can't believe it.

So, to celebrate, we had lunch from McDonald's. Later I made a peach cobbler, because peaches are MSH's favorite and I'm trying to use up all the food in the house before we move. And for our big anniversary dinner--frozen lasagna, well it was frozen when we bought it, I did heat it up before we ate it.

I think my need to explain things like that is my father's influence. He would have responded to that statement with "Why would you eat frozen lasagna? Was your oven broken? Even if it was, you could have let it thaw first. You must have been really hungry." or something similar. This type of thing usually resulted in a big eye-roll from me or my brothers, followed by a "Da-addy" and further unnecessary explanation, so in order to preempt this, we learned to fully explain every detail before he had a chance to get us. Looking back, I think it was funny, but at the time, I found it exasperating. But I've always been completely in love with my Daddy, exasperation and all.

OK, I admit, that was a little bit rambling and tangential, but that's just who I am.

This photo was taken on our honeymoon. I apologize for the quality, it's a scan of a low-quality copy of a snapshot from a roll of film that was x-rayed 17 times. But, you get the idea. It's one of my favorite pictures of him. What a handsome man I have. When my Granny met him, her first observation was, "Well, he's a tall somebody, ain't he?" Yes, Granny, he is a tall somebody. And six years into this life together, I'm glad to have this "tall somebody", everyday.

Today, I don't feel quite so bad, mostly because I'm an indignant person, and MSH keeps trying to make me feel guilty by pointing out that he remembered first. To which I respond that being reminded by your father is not the same as remembering. So, because he's trying to make me feel guilty, I actually don't feel as bad because I'm all about being a rebel, sometimes.

So, Happy Anniversary, MSH! I may have forgotten on the date, but I've never forgotten how much I love you. I am thankful for every day of the last six years and look forward to at least 60 more. And, I forgive you for forgetting our anniversary, and from this point forward, I'm going to chalk it up to living in the moment and not dwelling on the past because that makes me feel better about myself.

My Husband Rocks! Friday

I know I missed it last week, but we were up to our eyeballs in house-hunting. We did find one, but it's not quite a done deal yet, so I'll wait until it is to share. Plus, today is about MSH and another reason why he rocks.

The photos in this post have nothing to do with the post other than MSH is in them, and I love the way he interacts with our nephew, Richard, in these pictures. MSH had fallen asleep on the couch at my brother's house, and Richard, upon hearing him snore, had to go and investigate. So, he crawled into MSH's lap, waking him in the process, and they hung out for a little while.

On to why MSH rocks! He really helps me with so much. We both work, full time, so it only make sense that we divide the housework, too. It's not exactly always 50/50, but it's close, and there are days when he does more than I. I really started thinking about this earlier this week.

I mentioned something about him putting groceries away to one of my co-workers, and her response was, "You let him put the groceries away?" My response was, "Of course, he's perfectly capable of putting items into the refrigerator." This wasn't the first time we'd had an exchange like this. Then it sort of hit me, there are all these women out there who don't get help around the house, either because their husband's just don't do it or because they don't trust their husbands to do a good job.

MSH is an intelligent person, and he cares about our home being clean. Is it spotless all the time? Of course not, but we don't live in filth, and I don't spend all my spare time cleaning. Is everything done exactly the way I want it? No, but it's not all done the way he wants it either.

I mentioned to my mom a while back that I wanted to stop using the disposable Clorox wipes to clean the counters, so I had to get MSH to start using a dishrag on the nights that he cleans the kitchen. She told me that if I had a husband who would wipe down the counters, I should let him use what ever he wants. It just reminded me how lucky I am. (We did stop using the wipes, though, and he didn't mind at all.)

I recently started a new cleaning schedule where I do a little each day, Monday through Friday, and have nothing left but the dishes on the weekends. He's jumped on the bandwagon and never looked back. I've always appreciated how much he does at home and even brag on him every chance I get.

My husband rocks for many reasons, one of which is that he cleans!

And finally, we have lift off!

After spending the last 2 months wondering if MSH would be offered and accept the job in Georgia, then waiting for the Army to give us our Permanent Change of Station orders, then waiting for our travel orders to be approved, we're finally heading to Georgia tonight for our house-hunting trip. I know y'all just heard about the move last week, but this has been stressing me out since March!

MSH had to take off work today to meet with the folks who handle the moving, so I've left the packing for this trip up to him since we didn't actually find out that we're leaving tonight until this morning. Here's hoping I don't spend the next 5 days in platform heels and hot pants (not that I acually own any hot pants, but you never know)! See y'all next week!

Here's a little something to keep you smiling

Aren't BK & Ivey growing up pretty?

PS Have you noticed my love of the parenthetical expression(I think it stems from my love of sarcasm) and my fondess of the word "so". I am so going to have to work on that.

My Husband Rocks! Friday

I've joined the My Husband Rocks! Friday over at Katie Lin's blog The Great Adventure. So here's the first installment and a big announcement.

My husband rocks because he got a new job in Marietta, GA. This means that we're moving back to the real south August 15th! I'm so excited. This is the something I promised to tell you about a few weeks ago when I told that I was trying to keep MSH from climbing the walls and chewing his fingers to nubs. It's another government job, and the government moves so slowly. The main reason for my lack of posts lately is that the anxiety about this has been drinking all of my creative juices. That, and this is the only thing I wanted to write about, but couldn't lest some one in my office found out before it was official. I know he just took a new job a couple of months ago, and it really pained him to have to tell them that he's leaving so soon, but this is what we've been working for since we moved away in 2004.

So we will now be about 2 hours from our families. We will be able to buy a house with a yard maybe even one with a pool or on a lake. We will be able to send our future child(ren) to daycare if necessary for a reasonable amount of money. We may even be able to afford for me to stay home with our future child(ren) in a few years.

We're hoping to take a house-hunting trip next weekend, and that it all goes well because we will have less than 30 days to find, buy, and close on a house. So my excitement is tinged with a lot of apprehension and stress, but balanced with so much happiness and relief. Now, I just have to tell my boss.

So, my husband rocks for many reasons, one of which is that he's bringing me home.