23

Yesterday was our 23rd wedding anniversary.

God has really blessed me with an awesome husband.  He is honest, generous, and cute.  He treats me like a queen and knows how to make me giggle.  He is passionate about being a great husband and dad, and about growing God's kingdom.  I am really proud to be his wife.

To celebrate, we spent the afternoon together just chilling out, and then went out to eat.  Nothing fancy, just time to be together.  Just what we needed after some long, stressful days.  It was perfect.  (We were going to go see a movie, but the only choice was Transformers 3 or Harry Potter - neither of which excite me at all - so he spared me.  Thanks, honey!)

One thing that we do religiously is take a date night each week.  I can't describe how important this has been for our marriage.  With 6 kids and a job that doesn't necessarily have a set time schedule, it has been great to take time for ourselves each week.  We don't have to spend a lot of money (usually we go to the cheap movie night and eat a hamburger...) but just getting out helps us to be better parents, better missionaries, and better husband/wife to each other.  I'm really glad that we have this tradition and are setting this example for our kids.

You think you would know everything about someone after 23 years.  But today, I learned something new about my husband.  Bronwyn put some shoelaces in the dryer this morning.  After a while, the dryer started to make some funny noises and she looked in and the shoelaces were gone.  Then the dryer just stopped altogether.  My husband, who wouldn't be necessarily described as a handy-man, took almost the whole dryer apart (with my help, of course), fished out the shoelaces, fixed a broken wire caused by said shoelaces, then put the whole thing back together.  IMPRESSIVE!

Learn something new everyday.

Happy Anniversary, Kevin.  I love you!

Did you know....

that you can find out how to do almost everything by looking on YouTube.com?  Well, you can.

Here are some examples:  "how to kiss", "how to make a paper gun that shoots", "how to tie a tie", "how to be a nerd".  All of these interesting things can really be found on YouTube.  They have a "how to" for almost everything, but not everything.

The other day, Anderson brought home a "worm" made from a pantyhose leg stuffed with balls of crumpled up newspaper.  He was supposed to decorate it and take it back to school.

Since we have been pretty busy with organizing the house and all the other stuff going on, we, of course, waited until the last minute to do this.  I happened to see the worm and said, "Anderson, we have to decorate your worm today!"  He got a look of urgency on his face and got up to work on it.

The next thing I knew he was sitting at the computer, frustrated.  He said, "Mom, I got on YouTube, and typed this in, but nothing is coming up!" We looked at the YouTube page he had opened, and read what he had typed:

 "How to Decorate Homemade Worms".

Can you believe that ?  No YouTube videos on how to decorate homemade worms!

Actually we should be thankful that a video didn't pop up because who knows how "worm decorating" could be interpreted by the YouTube viewing public.

Anyway, he managed to get it decorated and was really happy with it.

Maybe we should have made a YouTube video of how we did it to help other worm-decorating 2nd graders out there.  Oh well....

My New Boyfriend....

It has been really cold here recently.  Until the past few days, the temperatures were down into the 30's and we don't have central heat.  That means really cold unless the sun comes out.  The worst part of the day is at night.

When we first moved to Brazil 9 years ago, we brought electric blankets.  They were accidentally left in the hotel where we stayed.  When we realized what had happened (in a matter of hours) they were "gone". Some cleaning lady got herself some new electric blankets, but without the controls.  They were with us.

Anyway, we don't have electric blankets, so we cover up with lots of covers and we are fine.  However, that initial "getting into a cold bed" isn't that much fun.  My boyfriend (husband) was always fussing at me for putting my cold toes on his warm legs.  Well, I just got me a new boyfriend.

Here he is:

A couple of years ago some Brazilian friends told me about filling up empty soda bottles with hot water and putting them in their bed at night.  I thought that was about the most redneck thing I had ever heard of.  Well, I guess I'm a redneck now because it really works!

Fill it up with hot water (not boiling or you might melt the bottle) and it stays hot/warm the whole night.  Nice for the cold toes.

So, hello new boyfriend.

Look, he was waiting for me to come to bed and he fell asleep doing crosswords.  How cute.