Happy Birthday to Me!

Another year older. So much has happened in the past year. So many changes, adjustments; so much growing up! Some of those changes were reflected beautifully in my birthday celebration.

When you think birthday gift, what do you think? Be honest. The first thing that popped into your mind was some form of "stuff", wasn't it? Well, we don't have room for more stuff. There's only so much stuff you can stuff into a 33foot RV. We've prioritized our spending to the point that we don't really have the cash to spend on more stuff, either. And, honestly, the less stuff we've had in recent months, the more free we've been, so we desire stuff less and less. Hmmm. If that's the case, what's a hubby to do to celebrate his wife's birthday? We're treading new ground here on what it means to give a gift to someone. And, oh man, if he did this well the first time around, I can't wait to see what the future brings!!

So...what was my hubby's birthday gift to me? You'll have to have some background on our life first. We have 2 boys that play football. It is currently football season. That means 4 nights per week of practice (5:30-7:30pm), and all day Saturday at the football field for games (one plays at 10am, the other at 3pm). This also means that, because darling hubby works mostly nights, I do the shuttling to practice and entertaining the 2 little ones during that time, feeding everyone late, doing bathing and bedtime most nights by myself. And on Fridays, this is compounded with putting together a cooler of drinks/food to make it through Saturday, a bag of toys to entertain little guys for hours on end, making sure laundry is caught up so we have changes of clothes for sweat-drenched kids to change into, gathering football equipment and making sure pads are switched from practice pants to game pants, breakfast is set out and ready at bedtime because Saturday morning is up and running around here...well, you get the point. Fridays are BUSY for me.

My birthday just happened to fall on Friday this year. And Dan was working again. The kids happened to wake up with a bee in their bonnet and it was shaping up to be a battling day. But all that gotta-do list had to get done!! By the time we had to leave for football practice, I was stressing because much of the list had gone by the wayside in favor of intervening in my kids' antics so as to keep all of them alive and my house in one piece. Dan called while we were at practice to see how things were going (sneaky man!) and got an earful of frustration. Little did I know that his gift was already in progress.

Football practice let out early, and we headed home thinking that MAYBE the list could be salvaged since it wasn't horribly late yet. I drove up to find that Dan was home already. That was strange. We opened the door to find the entire list done. No joke. The whole thing. The dog was bathed. The dishes were done. The laundry was in process. The floor (and ceiling - it's carpeted in our RV!) had been vacuumed. The toys were put away. The porch was swept. The bathroom was cleaned. And Dan was just waiting for me to get home so he could go out and do take-out for whatever my heart desired for dinner; there were chicken tenders already cooking for the kids. My sweet man had planned ahead, talked to his boss, and gotten approval to take off early so he could do this for me. What a precious gift!!!! He took the whole burden off of my shoulders. It's not just the *doing* the stuff, but also the *thinking* to be sure that everyone has everything covered for the entire next day because we won't be home at all. He did that just for me! I think I'm likin' this creative, no-stuff, gift-giving thing!! We wound up having a wonderfully relaxing evening, and a great day at football the next day with both sets of grandparents there to cheer on the kids. To steal a phrase, it was a "perfectly perfect" birthday weekend! (oh, and there were French Silk Pie *and* Publix birthday cake. YUM!)