Monday, February 4, 2013

Birthday Week

Scarecrow and I had another milestone this past week.  We FINALLY celebrated his birthday together!  Can you believe that!  This fact coupled with the fact that he turned 35 (a big deal, I think) meant I wanted to stretch the celebration out a little. We don't have a lot of money, which may be an understatement, but I still wanted this to be a big deal.

We started off by going to the cinema, a treat in itself for us.  The Omniplex recently started 5 euro Wednesdays.  Given that this is nearly half price they have been doing quite well on Wednesdays.  We went and saw Jack Reacher which Scarecrow had been really anxious to see.  Lots of action and a happy fella made for a great evening.

A couple of my most favorite things (because he liked them and selfishly because I get to enjoy them too!) were Internet ideas.  I gave them to him over the course of the week leading up to his birthday.  One was taken from a pin that I recently saw (if you know me you know I'm pretty Pintrest obsessed).  Here's the link to the page.  It's cute ideas for FHE (family home evening) for newlywed couple's.  This is something that members of our church have been counseled to do.  Life's busy, we need to designate some family time.  Confession; we haven't really "done" FHE since we've gotten married.  It's not something either of us were particularly in the habit of doing before we got married.  We've wanted to, and have talked about it a lot.  We just needed a little push.  So this was the push.    But we aren't just a newlywed couple, we're a newlywed couple with a 13 year old.  So that led to me Google-ing and compiling a list of 30+ COMPLETE FHE ideas.  I broke them into 2 categories, one for us to do when we don't have Toto and ones that we can do with her.  So click here for the FHE ideas for couples and here for the family FHE ideas.  I still need to print them on different colors of paper (one for couple, one for family) and stick them in a can.  But now the leg work is done we can get to family time!

Another thing we've been wanting to work on is having a more regular date night.  One of the things I learned during the marriage class at church (thank you John and Jean Morales!) was the importance of date night.  And not just bumming out in front of a movie every time.  When it comes to coming up with ideas we just aren't very creative on the fly and we don't really have enough brain waves to spare too much planning in advance.  Enter one of my favorite websites, The Dating Divas.  I stole yet another idea from them and expounded/tweaked it to make it work for us.  They had posted this link about a wedding gift called Can O' Dates.  They even listed a ton of ideas.  Unfortunately, do to the fact that we're not in the States, some of the ideas don't work for us and had to be removed/modified.  But here is the link for their version along with a cute printable to cover your can.  Here is the more Ireland/us friendly version along with directions to go back to the Dating Divas website for more specifics on certain ideas.  PS-I'll post what my can ended up looking like.  And so I have given my husband the gift of not having to wrack his brain for ideas when it's his turn to come up with FHE/date night activities.  How cool is that?

On the Scarecrow's actual birthday he took a half day and what did we do?  We ran errands!  Yipee!  We actually had a lot of places to stop that we can't do on a Saturday so it was perfect to wander the town, pick up his "real" birthday present (a leather case for his clerk stuff) and hold hands.  That night Toto and I made him a delicious cake.  Well, all I really did was supply the idea and the recipe and let Toto go to town.  It came out so well!


I love him more and more every day and every year.  He's a great dad, an amazing husband, and I couldn't have gotten better.  Lucky, lucky me.