Last Night Was Fun: Part I

Last night was fun. It was our Titanic night! I don't have my SD reader with me, though, and we took a few cute pictures, so that part of the night will have to wait for a future post. 

Other fun things happened last night...

I got a few surprises. 

Surprise Numero Un: Mark was at the Goodwill (big surprise) and guess what he found?! A punch bowl that matches exactly to the gorgeous punch bowl he got me for Valentine's Day. So now we have two punch bowls and twenty punch glasses. Just enough for when we get our immediate family together, AND now I can have some punch fun and make two varieties... watch out y'all, it's getting fancy up in here!

Surprise Numero Deux: Two books... the first, a guide to Catholicism. I never grow tired of reading about my religion. I learn new things about it all the time. The second, a guide to wedding planning - the most frequently asked questions on what to do and how to handle those tricky wedding planning situations. (I am absolutely determined that our engagement will be stress-free... people think I'm crazy for this and that it is inevitable... but I'm still going to give it a good go! I've threatened elopement if things start to get all junior-high.)

After Mark presents me with said wedding planning book, I smile and start to do this cute little dance around our bedroom... "Does this mean the ring is coming soon?!"... *Mark smiles and laughs a bit*... "It does! It does! The ring is coming soon! I'm soooooo exxxccccciiiiiitttttteeeeeeed!"... He neither confirmed nor denied me, he merely stood there with a huge grin on his face and watched me do my little dance. I'm pretty sure he sticks around because I'm so stinkin' cute ;) Then I put the book down and said "Okay, it's Titanic time!!!" 

I swear I have A.D.H.D. sometimes... 

Looking forward to sharing our Titanic story with you!

My Courageous Man

Backtracking it to this past Friday. At least, I think it was Friday. Time's a-slippin' away fast lately.

My last post was all about surprises (Big surprise, right? I know.) and I left y'all wonderin' what my next surprise was going to be; the one I was getting that night.

Okay, well. Here it goes:

I burnt my pizza crust that night. Totally bummed! So, Mark got pizza and I had chicken and dumpling soup. (Thank you Campbell's, you genius soup-makers!) Mark brought home some movies from the library, remember, I had told y'all he got all chick flicks. So he asks me which one I want to watch and I'm thinking Where is my surprise? I want that first! but instead I pick out the one with Diane Keaton and Rachel McAdams where Harrison Ford plays the cranky news caster. Sounds like my kinda movie. I send him down to the big screen to set it all up while I finish gathering a few things for dinner. When I come down he isn't playing the movie. The television isn't even on. What the???? One of my favorite bands, Casting Crowns, is playing on the iPod dock. Forgetting something, I turn around and run back up to the kitchen, only to come back down to the song Courageous once again. Where's the movie? What is my man doing? So weird.

I sit down on the couch and set my nice hot bowl of soup in my lap. Mark is still standing there, the music is still playing. "Are you ready," he asked. "Well. Yeahhh." I'm thinking: What is this man of mine doing? Where is my movie? My soup is getting cold! Then Mark turns off the iPod dock, turns on the tv, and sits down next to me. I'm just thinking so weird over and over again. Then I see it! Four police officers take focus on the tv screen!!! I knew it right away! I look at Mark, huge smile on my face, and with his arms high in the air he goes "I SURPRISED YOU!!!" Courageous. We've had it on request at the library since, oh, you know, Forever!! I could not have been more excited to see this movie!

Half way through the movie I turn to Mark and ask him if he is My Courageous Man. He says to me, without missing a darn beat, "I want to be the best father to your children." I mean, people, if that doesn't melt your heart what will!!?

Ah, Love. It's a grand thing. Go watch Courageous; and if you don't already have what this movie is talking about, go out there and find it!!!

Surprise Me

Each day this week Mark has been asking me if I’m excited for my surprise. That isn’t an unusual question for him to ask me. What also is not unusual is the string of questions I ask. When do I get it? How big is it? Is it this big? Okay, well, is it this small? What color is it? Is it a book? Can I wear it? All to which his reply is something like “I can not say” and sometimes in a funny accent that makes me giggle.

I’ve been at work a lot, doing some overnights while the bosses are out of town on business, and so I crawled into bed at 1 a.m. this morning and woke up a very groggy girl at 6:15. As I am tying my shoes in preparation for our morning walk (and it is raining today, oh joy!) I ask him “Can I have my surprise now?” “You can have one of them,” he says, and he presents me with a book. It is a big and beautiful hardback book called Period Style by distinguished international interior designer Mary Gilliatt. I. Was. Thrilled! As thrilled as I was, I will note that Mark said one of them, which means that there is more coming, which he confirmed by asking me if I was excited for my surprise tonight when I kissed him goodbye in the driveway and sent him off to his day at the office. Woo-hoo!

Anyways, back to my book. It is about interior design from the 16^th century on with just oodles of photographs and very technical design information. So lovely! Design has always been something that has intrigued me… whether it is designing cards, scrapbooks, websites, parties, or rooms in a house. I used to play this computer game as a kid called Sierra Home Architect and I literally spent hours on that thing building and decorating hundreds of homes. Now, I get to do it in real life with our real estate investment company. Whenever we are looking at a house or talking to a contractor Mark will point to me and say something like “I know what to do once we decide it’s a good investment, but I can’t do anything until she can look at a kitchen or a bathroom and decides she likes the way she can make it look once we’re done with it.”  It’s a true story. I walk into a house and I almost immediately take in the surroundings and decide how I would decorate it if it was mine.

I am especially excited because we are making some design updates on our house. It’s been slow moving – our new toilet has been sitting in our bedroom for, oh I don’t know, six or seven months lately… maybe longer? I really don’t remember, which is very sad – but I’ve been changing my mind and finding new things that I want to do instead of what I thought I had already made up my mind on, so the time has been beneficial in that I’m using it to really figure out how I want our house to look like. There are just so many possibilities and I love so many different design styles that I’m having a difficult time picking things out.

I have, however, settled on a few of the new bathroom elements (which is currently pink with accents of powder blue… a design nightmare!). The bathroom will be gray and white with a tid bit of beige. That may sound weird, but I’ve got it all figured out in my head. We have the new tile, thanks to his brother who gave us the extra tile he didn’t use in his house, that has a bit of beige in it. We’ll be painting the bathroom wall tiles Dolphin gray by Martha Stewart Living and the walls Popcorn white. Mark thought it was hysterical that I was comparing whites. He was like “It’s just white.” And I was like “There is no such thing as just white.” I was almost shocked that he didn’t have an opinion on the shade of white… “Popcorn, Gallery, I don’t care, it’s all white to me so pick whatever you want”, and so I did J Our new shower curtain is lovely. I found it at Bed Bath & Beyond. I found a living art wall piece on Pinterest that I’ve fallen in love with and will now copycat using fake flowers from Hobby Lobby in shades of white, gray, taupe, and beige. I’m pretty excited!

Oh, another thing to be excited about… while I was away at work Mark cleaned our whole house! I didn’t notice anything when I came home because it was pitch black and all I was thinking about was snuggling into the warm bed, but he had everything clean (he even scrubbed the kitchen sink and loaded AND ran the dishwasher!) and put away all the laundry. On top of that, three out of the four movies he rented from the library for us to enjoy this weekend are chick flicks.

I mean, really, some women only dream of something like that. Haha

I wonder what my surprise will be tonight?

Moshe & Nechama

... that's Hebrew for "Mark & Nichole". It is pronounced "Mosh-ay and Netch-uh-mah". Sounds pretty, doesn't it? I thought so. 

I took the liberty of translating our names into Hebrew while I was working on a fun little project for my students this past Wednesday. It was a pretty fun project and we spent a good hour discussing Hebrew names and although they are still a bit confused that Jesus' name is really Yeshua which in the Hebrew form of Joshua and no one ever called him Jesus... they thought it was pretty darn cool and I proved that PSR can be awesome. LOL 

Anyways, back to my point. Moshe is the Hebrew name that most resembles Mark and means "savior". It also just so happens to be how Moses' name was pronounced. THAT was a fun fact to find out! So, not only is Jesus a Hebrew Yeshua and an English Jesus, Mark is a Hebrew Moshe and an English Moses. Kind of a fun twist, isn't it? Or maybe I'm just weird by thinking so. Nechama is the Hebrew name that most resembles Nichole and means "soothing". I don't think there are any biblical figures I share that name with, but it was a pretty and popular name for baby girls at the time of Jesus, or Yeshua, or Joshua... whatever you want to call Him!... and I found several Hebrew documents that listed Nichole as it's most resembled English form of Nechama.

Basically, I discovered that I really love a lot of Hebrew names. Since Mark and I have discussed giving our children traditional Gaelic middle names, we may perhaps have to pair it up with a few good Hebrew first names... haha! Here's some fun Hebrew-Gaelic combinations I came up with just for kicks:

Meira Aibreann 

(pronounced Meh-ay-rah Ab-rawn)

Abel Ciarain

(pronounced A-bul Keer-ahn)

I've always had a fascination with names from different cultures, but no worries dear family and friends... I promise I won't go all Hebrew on you all; you won't need a pronunciation to read the birth announcements! We actually have a few rather simple first names already on the list!

There are a few ways to find out what your own Hebrew name would have been way back when in the year 6 AD. You could go to www.my-hebrew-name.com, type in your name, and see what pops up on the site... or, you could do what I did and actually research through meanings and historical documentations. It took me about an hour to get both Mark's and my Hebrew names (I know, I'm completely ridiculous!), but if you are in it just for kicks and not for accuracy then my-hebrew-name is pretty fun.

You're probably all thinking "This chick is cracked" right about now. ha ha Well, Mark thought it was cool...

Baby O

Mark and I give our neighbors lots of reasons to laugh at us. Most recently, if they just so happened to be looking out of their windows at the right time, they would have witnessed our Baby O Adventure. That's right. We get ourselves into some weird adventures.

It was, I don't know, the Thursday or Friday night before Easter. It was pretty late, and Mark went outside into our back yard for a minute and came in and said "I think there is an animal in our backyard" and proceeded to open the dining room window while we both peered out into the darkness. "There was something furry by the tree that ran off."

I couldn't see a darn thing. BUT, I could HEAR something. "What the flippity flap is that!?" I said, as I left the window,threw a hoody over my nightgown, and went for the back yard. Mark followed me and we saw a bunch of little somethings crawling around in the dark on our back lawn. There was an obnoxious barking sound, not like a dog, but like a wild animal. I was perturbed and intrigued and had Mark go back inside for a light and the BB gun. (We seriously need some outdoor lighting for our patio.)

When he came back, this is what our yard looked like... this is how we entertain our neighbors...

 

I was thinking a spot light, or a flash light.... but no, the crazy love of my life went inside, grabbed the lamp that I have sitting on our piano, removes the shade, and sets it in our yard plugged into an electrical extension cord. Yeeeaaaah. 

After I give him this look and he goes "What? You wanted a light!" and while I finish laughing my butt off, we find it. We find the little barking bugger that got left behind in our yard...

 

This is Baby O, the opossum that was crawling around barking for his mama in our yard. I snapped a few pictures of him and, at one point, says to Mark "If the mom isn't around, we are so saving him!" (Ever since  Bunny Butler, I've been on the lookout for wild animals in need.) It wasn't necessary, however, because Big Mama was still lingering... and she was a-watchin'... and when I realized it... I FLIPPED! I screamed "Ruuuuuuunnnnnn!" and Mark turns around and makes his way for the garage door. I. Have. Never. Seen. A. Man. Run. Slower. I was like "Go! Go! Gogogogogo! GOOOO!" and all the way Mark is doing that tip-toe run towards the door and I'm thinking Big Mama is going to go all Mama-Bear-Ape-Shat on me because I was photographing Baby O while she's sitting by our shed hiding in the dark, and I am just sure ready to tear Mark and I to shreds. 

I should mention... I know jack-crap about opossums. I learned the next day that they are the slowest things ever. LOL Still... I got a good laugh at Mark's lame arse excuse of a run, who said "I wasn't scared!" as his excuse. For me, it was like one of those dreams where you are trying to run away from something and no matter how hard you try you can't seem to get good speed. I was sure we were going to die. Okay, so that's a little extreme and dramatic, but I was sure Big Mama was only inches away from attacking me.

Nope, I really wasn't kidding when I said we provide good entertainment for the neighbors. You could probably picture it - the two of us, in our pajamas, armed with a pretty lamp, a BB gun, and a fancy Canon camera while I'm screaming for my life and trying to get my slow boyfriend to run away from a opossum that is sitting completely still a good 25 or 30 feet away. It was ridiculously funny. 

We could sell tickets and make some money off this stuff.

April 5, 2012

Sorry for the lack of creativity in this blog title... I'll come up with a good one next time.

Mark brought me home some surprises yesterday :) Already, I was in a super wonderful mood when I got home from work last night, in spite of the severe traffic jam on 170 which caused me to have to detour all-the-heck-over Saint Louis, because Mark was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher and had just finished putting away all the clean laundry I had left folded downstairs. I didn't even know he was aware of which of my clothes went into which drawers... LOL. So I plop the grocery bags on the counter and begin to open the bag of frozen chicken to defrost. 

Mark has a super big grin on his face this whole time (which, honestly, isn't that far out of the ordinary when I come home from work, so I didn't question his gleeful attitude). When I open the microwave there is something in there (It was the hot plate I've been wanting so we could brown potatoes in the microwave, by the way. He had stuck it in there to surprise me, knowing I would find it.) and as I picked it up I said "Hey, what's this!?" and as I turned around I spotted something on the stove. Keep in mind, at this point I've been in the kitchen for probably 5 minutes or so and Mark and I had already had the whole "So, how was your day, Baby" conversation.

This is how oblivious I am sometimes... I didn't even see this and it was right in front of me:

 

On the other side of the "Love You!" card he wrote: "I was walking down the path to work and the beauty of these flowers made me think of you..."

AWWWWW! How sweet is he!? We started laughing because it took me that long to see it. I don't know how I noticed that he had scrubbed down the stovetop but not have noticed that he had decorated it for me! LOL 

The red one hasn't bloomed yet and smells like cranberries, and the pink one is super sweet smelling. It was the cutest little thing to come home to work to. :)