"One year older and wiser too.."

I definitely am one year older but I'm not so sure about the wiser part! It ended up being a crazy weekend and I didn't get many pictures this year. I'll have to try and do better next year!

It all started on Friday night when Nate and I went out to dinner with my family. We went to Madelin's Steak House. It was so good! Also, they found out it was my birthday and gave me a HUGE piece of an Ice Cream Mud Pie thing. Luckily for my family I'm nice and happened to be very full because I shared it with all of them. Luckily also, there was enough to go around. On the way home we needed to run by Lowe's to get stuff for our yard, of course. While there we decided to get a ceiling fan for our room. I didn't know at the time but they also have remotes you can get for them that turn the fan and light on and off as well as dim the light. Nate told me about it and was so excited to try it out!!

Nate had told me earlier that week that he wanted to take me out on Saturday for my birthday and I was so excited!! Sad to say but it has been a while since we have been out by ourselves between school, work and our yard. I had a bridal shower to go to Saturday afternoon. When I got home and found Nate working on the fan I knew our date was out of the question! When we got our fan and the guy was explaining how to install it he told Nate it was really easy and would be very fast, about 30 minutes. Well I knew that meant about 3 hours. Nothing against my wonderful husband but he has never installed one before and I'm sure it takes a little longer when your trying to figure out exactly what your doing. Also, all of our house projects have taken at least two times longer than originally planned. So, I was speaking from experience when I said 3 hours!

Lets just say I underestimated! BIG TIME!!! He worked on it until about 7:00 when he finally gave up and decided to take me out to dinner because the control piece from the remote wasn't fitting in the light the way it was supposed to! He took me to Leatherby's which we both LOVE! It's almost like the best of both worlds there. You get really good food as well as really good ice cream. If you didn't already know, Ice Cream is my FAVORITE!! After dinner we had to go back to Lowe's because the super smart man told us to get the wrong things. This time when we went there that same man was there but he had 2 other super smart men with him. Hopefully you can sense the sarcasm!! We didn't realize how smart they were until we got home that night and tried working our 30 minute installation. Nate wanted to go to a movie but I just wanted to go home and relax so we compromised and bought a movie we could watch at home! He even bough Bride Wars. It was the first time we had seen it and loved it! It was so funny. But the real fun started again after the movie was over and we decided to work on the fan again. We needed to have it finished that night because our room was in shambles from all the light stuff everywhere and we had no power. Oh ya, speaking of power I forgot to mention that earlier that day, before we went to dinner I touched a live wire and was electrocuted for my first time ever! Lets just say it scared me more than it hurt and it put me in an even worse mood!!
Well, needless to say, we worked on that darn fan from about 10 pm until about 1:30 am. The most frustrating thing of all wasn't that we couldn't get it to work, it was that we were doing everything the way those 3 smart men were telling us too and it wasn't working! With both of us at our wits end we decided to call it a night. We cleared off our bed as much as we could and luckily we didn't have to worry about not having power because it wasn't to cold that night!

Nate had a vision in the middle of the night which I am very happy to say he kept to himself until I woke up the next morning. Let's just say what he had in visioned worked!!! Once we figured out what we were doing it took us about an hour and half to get everything installed, running and cleaned up!

Sorry, I kind of got a little carried away and kind of put two posts into one but the moral of this story is to NEVER, NEVER, NEVER assume that the guys at Lowe's know what their talking about when they tell you how to do something or what you should buy for a certain project because they usually don't. The worst part of all is that they won't admit to it. They sound so confident and talk to you like they know everything when in reality they hardly do! But you don't know that until you get home with your project and try to follow their instructions and advice!! So I finally had a working light and fan with a remote for my birthday and can I say how proude Nate was! He was so excited! And at least now we know how to do it so next time we can do it in 30 minutes!

After church Nate and I and Nate's family all went over to my parents and we had a big family dinner. We had BBQ'd Hawaiian burgers and all the yummy sides that come with a BBQ! It was great! After we hung out and played Guitar Hero World Tour and then had Cake and Ice Cream. Nate's mom brought the cake. She said she saw it at the store and thought of me! It was a triple chololate something or other cake. It was chocolate cake with a chocolate icing layer in the middle, chocolate frosting on the outside with chocolate slivers all over the top and sides! If you haven't guessed already, I love chocolate so she hit that right on the nose! It was so good but so rich!!

Over all I had an amazing birthday. Thank you so much to our families for a great day and for spending it with us and for all their love! Thank you also to the best husband ever for a great weekend, minus the fan! Also, thank you to both for all the fun gifts. My amazing husband got me a Cricket and I can't wait to try it out. Then my families got me cartridges for it! Thank you so much you guys! I love you all so so much......

All the fun stuff from Nate



All the fun stuff from my families