sarah's blog

I turned 28 on Thursday. As you know from years past, it is becoming an annual tradition for John to be away at training the whole week of my birthday. This year he was again across town in a dorm room with a pile of people but was able to come home on Wednesday night, beautiful flowers in hand, so he could wake up and say happy birthday to me on The Day. Coming in a close second was an early morning text from my mommy!

Last week my in-laws were here and we went out to dinner as an early celebration – I picked Swiss Chalet. My family knows what I’m talkin about. Then we had ice cream cake. I saved the cards I got in the mail to open on my birthday, so thanks Grandma H and Grandma and Grandpa B.

It wasn’t as bad to have John away this year because circumstances aligned to make Thursday an incredibly busy day with work and I ended up having to go in to the office to pick up packages and to do a million last minute things for the this conference I am helping to organize. All this kept me nice and distracted from the fact that my birthday was whizzing by.

But then some people in the office found out it was my birthday and ran out and got a cake and my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and nephew stopped by with desserts. I was starting to feel quite spoiled on a day that is considered to be postponed and will likely be celebrated again when the dust of conferences settles.

All in all it was a very full day and a very good one. I wouldn’t say relaxing, but productive, which can have a similar affect. Not much time to reflect on another year gone by, maybe in August I can think like that!

Hey, if you’re interested, I did a charity: water campaign for my birthday like I did at Christmas, just an opportunity to give a gift to someone who really needs it instead of me who has too much stuff in my house already. The campaign is still open for awhile longer so please consider helping me reach my goal of $280, clean water for 14 people. You’ve heard me go on and on about charity: water before but they’re good people, and 100% of your donation will go directly to the projects.

And don’t feel bad for me not getting gifts. My husband is buying me an iPhone 4.

Today was Valentines Day as well as Chinese New Year and Day 3 of the Olympics. Poor Vancouver, walking through the mall I can tell the stores are having complete marketing overload. Good thing red is the colour of all three events.

We celebrated with John’s sister Janna, sister Adrianne, her husband Gordie and our nephew with some Chinese food from Mr. Ho’s at our place. Add a bowl full of chocolates, some egg tarts and Chinese tea and I think we had the holidays covered.

John took care of ordering and picking up the Chinese food. He also gave me a hilarious card, the orchids you see below and helped clean up the house. What more could a girl ask for on Valentines Day?

Maybe a gold medal. (more…)

Today was our third wedding anniversary. It was a pretty low-key day, I mean I remembered to say something to John when we got up this morning but then I forgot to tell anyone else until the afternoon. It’s a Tuesday so we didn’t have anything wild and crazy planned. We both agreed we are tired and have been going in and out of town all summer and what would make us most enjoy this day is to take the pressure of ourselves to celebrate in a any certain way.

I tried to buy a card for John but for some reason they were all just so bad this year. Heavy, velvet appliqué, five pages of poetry about how your husband/wife is the glue that holds the whole universe together and your only reason for living… and the whole thing ways more than my purse. None of them said “John” to me, that’s for sure.

I won’t get into it too much because I have neither the time now the memory to recall all the details but my card search resulted in some pretty funny suggestions by myself and a couple of my co-workers for something we liked to call “Biblically accurate Christian cards”. Many ideas were hatched, including “I will love you forever, unless there’s no marriage in heaven” or “I will stay with you through good times and bad, pre- and post-trib.” You get the idea.

I almost went for a Christian card in the bookstore at work that had a terribly mis-quoted verse from Song of Solomon about springs of water which could have at least gotten a laugh.

What I did end up doing was coming home and meeting John and our friends, who are visiting, for sushi at Sushi Garden. John showed up with a big bouquet of flowers and a card. Then we all got bubble tea and John and I came home and I did what I always do when he gets me flowers: take the bouquet apart and create a bunch of little flower arrangements. This is the way to go with store-bought bunches, break them up by types or colors and they will fill your house and look like you picked them all out individually. Currently I’m really into using glass milk bottles and mason jars to hold casual bunches of daisies and brown-eyed susans.

I’ll put pictures of the flowers up another time, today I’ll do what I’ve done before: I  like to surface some wedding photos each year that haven’t previously been on my blog or Facebook. Enjoy. And happy anniversary babe.

Click on the pictures to see them full-size.

The details of my dress…

My mom showing off the necklace my dad bought her for the wedding: it had the August stone in it to commemorate our wedding for her…

Our wedding rings and my “something blue”: my shoes…

Just us…

I love it when John brings me flowers. He knows how much I love them and he always picks the perfect bunch. The best part is he got them just because.