Happy birthday, baby!

This sexy man turns 25 today. Happy birthday, my love! Welcome to the quarter-century year-old club.

This marks the 8th birthday that we’ve been together, and the 11th birthday we have had since we met each other – woah.

I am so fortunate to be the wife to a man who is hardworking, smart, loyal, thoughtful, drop dead sexy, a great pup father and a good foot rubber. I love you, dear. Hope this is the best year yet!

A quarter of a century flown by

Today I turned 25, and for some reason this feels like a monumental birthday to me. Growing up, I always saw 25 as being the official marker of adulthood. (Who considers a 21-year-old an adult, really?) It’s the age your car insurance goes down, it’s a quarter of a century, it’s the age my parents were when I was born. There’s no denying it now, I’m really an adult.

Years from now, looking back on this birthday, I want to remember how completely content I am. Madly in love with my husband. Gainfully employed in a job that is fulfilling on most days, working with people I genuinely love. Working in an entirely different field that I imagined 3 years ago. Gaining rich, rewarding volunteer experiences. Still close to the people who have been my friends for 12+ years now. Earning enough to not struggle much from month to month, and close enough to recent history when that wasn’t the case to really appreciate what that means. Living day to day life in our cute, tiny, cozy little house filled with my favorite man, my favorite furry friends. A still relatively new homeowner that marvels at the ability to paint walls, tear up flooring, and create a home. Proud caretaker of a fledgling perennial garden that isn’t weeded as much as it should be. Increasing confidence in the direction of my life, of my redefined career goals, of my growth as a woman, wife, future mother, friend, employee.

I can’t help but wonder what the next quarter century has in store.  In another 25 years, I hope to be the proud mother of one or two college graduates. To have established a slightly larger, but still just as cozy home on an acre or so where our children come back to visit us, to stay in a home that’s filled with memories for them.

From Countryliving.com

To have a huge king sized bed with a worn, lumpy mattress from Saturday morning cartoons in bed with our kids and our dogs piled under the covers.

To still be madly in love with my handsome husband, getting ready for a new section of our life as the parents of grown children. To be established in my career, and have my husband in a career he loves, too. To have the time to really give back. To have a huge garden that feeds us in the summer but also fills the house with beautiful perennial flowers.

From thousandislandslife.com

To have traveled to a country on a different continent (preferably multiple countries and multiple continents). To know how to finish a quilt from beginning to end. To be looking forward to watching my husband’s eyes light up at holding our first grandchild. (Woah.)

Life is a beautiful, surprising, joyful journey. I am so thankful for these first 25 years and all of the simple pleasures they have held. To the next quarter century.

Meet Rufus, a sodaholic

You know that old joke about kids liking wrapping paper/boxes/bags better than the presents they contain?

Dogs aren’t much better. Ours have more toys that I can count or trip over in the middle of the night. Rope toys, squeaky toys, stuffed animals, nylabones … But what they want most are discarded socks or empty pop bottles.

Glug glug glug

Hey, it’s recycling, right?

Looks like we're not the only ones addicted to soda.

Good to the last drop

Sorry about the lack of crafts tonight. Feeling a bit under the weather and the most entertainment going on around here is watching a big, dumb dog pretend to drink soda. Ha!

A Valentine’s tribute

Warning to all readers: Schmaltz ahead. Feel free to ignore.

What would Valentine’s Day be without a tribute to my favorite person in the whole world?

My husband is amazing. Seriously. Right now, he is working fulltime while attending graduate school, and getting great grades to boot. He is a super hard worker, and does all of this while still managing to help around the house, feed the dogs, and be an attentive husband. In short, he is a saint.

He is the calm to my storm, the tall to my short, the skinny to my …  not so skinny, the love of my life and the bacon to my eggs.

Happy Valentine’s Day, dear readers.