MichaelandChrissy.com

Chrissy turned thirty on Thursday, December 4th.  It’s a big milestone in a person’s life, to be sure, but we couldn’t celebrate then because she had a Master’s class that night.  So, we decided to mark the occasion with a trip to Chicago on the following weekend.  I had gotten her a new Canon Powershot A2000 camera for her birthday, and we wanted to put it to good use during our visit.

On Saturday afternoon, Chrissy and I drove out to Chicago for our reservations at the “Chicago Chop House“, a highly rated steak house.  Our waiter, Glen, was very knowledgeable about the food and wine.  We settled on a bottle of German Riesling, which was very tasty.  The food was fantastic: I had a “Cowboy Cut” Prime Rib, seared and seasoned with Cajun spices, and Chrissy had the hand-prepared “Surf and Turf”.

We thoroughly enjoyed the food, and we are one of those weird couples that feed each other during the meal.  I always end up wishing that I had what she ordered.  We finished up with dessert: Chrissy had a hot fudge sundae and I had a huge slice of “Chocolate Triple Play” cake.  It was a great meal, but easily the most expensive one that Chrissy and I have ever had.

After dinner, I had planned on going to the Hancock Building to have a few drinks at their lounge on the 96th floor.  We also had the option to attend a symphony on the University of Chicago campus that night.  However, Chrissy was full and happy, and anxious to get home to our kids.  So we cut our Chicago outing satisfyingly short.  Even without after-dinner plans, we had a great time and enjoyed each others company.

We threw Aiden a birthday party this weekend, even though he doesn’t turn “2″ until next weekend (we had it early because next weekend is Labor Day and people might be out of town).  Aiden had a sports-themed party, complete with a White Sox baseball birthday cake, a basketball hoop in the yard, and decorative pennants for all sorts of sports.  Aiden’s favorite word (next to “Uh oh!”) is “Ball”, so sports seemed the way to go this year.

The weather channel said that it was going to rain on Saturday, so we had made alternate plans to pile everyone into the house.  Luckily, there was no rain.  The sky did darken a little bit, but that was kind of nice because it cooled things down (it had been muggy and powerfully hot all day).  Timely, that was when we let Aiden open his presents in the back yard.  He got plenty of birthday gifts, but he really wanted to run off and play towards the end.  Just a few more presents to open, buddy!

Everyone had a good time, especially Aiden.  The only ones who didn’t appreciate the party were the group of hornets that took up residence on our deck.  Chrissy noticed them in the morning and her dad “relocated” them (to hell).   Thankfully, they were gone before guests started to arrive.  There were a lot of little kids over that day, and bees would have complicated things.

I’m not sure where the idea for a “push prize” came from, but I’m sure it came from a pregnant woman. This is where you buy a present for your wife as a reward for making it through labor and delivery.  I’m thinking that labor and delivery is expensive enough without additional costs adding to the total.  But I understand the principle of the matter, so I set out to get something shiny for Chrissy (jewelry being the predominant gift for this sort of thing).

When Aiden was born, I gave Chrissy a ruby and diamond three-stone pendant.  She saw it at Jared Jewelers while we were shopping for wedding rings and loved it.  However, aside from her wedding ring and that pendant, she doesn’t wear much jewelry.  I’ve gotten her plenty of sparkly things, but she only wears them on special occasions.  So, I decided to try something else.  What does Chrissy love most (besides me and Aiden)?  Scrapbooking!

Chrissy had mentioned that she would like a printer that can handle 12×12 scrapbook paper.  “Well, there’s no such thing,” I told her.  It turns out that HP, Epson, and Canon all make printers capable of printing on 13×19 paper.  However, only one of them, the Epson Stylus 1400, can feed 12×12 paper directly; the others make you print on 13×19 paper and then trim it back to 12×12 with scissors.  I think that Chrissy would want to print directly on 12×12 scrapbooking paper (that she has in a variety of colors).

After checking around a little bit on the internet, I found the best price for the Epson 1440 on buydig.com. I’ve never used them before, but they offer free shipping and the printer weighs 25 pounds, so I went with them.  As an added bonus, they let you pay via PayPal.  That was my downfall, since Chrissy monitors my PayPal transactions (to make sure that I’m not buying another Fort Max on eBay), and discovered the purchase well ahead of time.

It didn’t help at all that buydig.com shipped the printer without so much as wrapping it in brown paper.  Federal Express made Chrissy sign for a huge box that said “Epson 1400 Wide Format Printer” all over it.  Apparently, the universe conspires against my secrets and forces them into the light!  On the bright side, Chrissy should theoretically be able to start scrapbooking again as soon as we get home from the hospital.  When she’s not feeding small children, at least.

Today I finally got around to editting the video from Christmas morning.  Aiden emptied out his Transformers stocking and found three “rumble” cars and a pretend phone shaped like a cow.  Aiden loved the cow phone, and didn’t pay much attention to anything else coming out of the stocking.  Unfortunately, the video from the first attempt was filmed sideways, so we had to do it again.  The second try was sort of forced at first, and it shows a little in the video. 

The next video was from shortly after Christmas.  Aiden loves to play on the keyboard while we’re at the computer, and we had wanted to catch this on film.  He usually begs to be picked up, and then plays with the mouse when you put him in your lap.  Sometimes it’s scary because we’ll be working on something, and we’re afraid that he’ll hit a key that will break whatever we’re working on.  No catastrophes yet though.  Eventually, Aiden will end up being a techie just like Daddy. 

Chrissy and I might be the last people on earth who celebrate Sweetest Day. Sweetest Day usually falls on the third week in October, but the exact date can be unpredictable. We never really know each year until we check the calendar. Oddly, we treat this day as being almost as important as Valentine’s Day (we joke that Chrissy left me once because I only gave her a card on our first Sweetest Day).

So each year, we try to come up with something thoughtful for each other on Sweetest Day (no gift cards here!). Nothing too extravagant, but we typically go over budget. Because Chrissy loves to take pictures of Aiden, I got her a pair of strobe flashbulbs with matching umbrella stands. She loved them, and can’t wait to put them to use for Aiden’s Fall photos.

Chrissy got me large frames for my Optimus Prime and Megatron posters. I’ve had these rolled up in the closet since 2000, since they were exclusive to the 1999 Botcon (I missed that one, but I ordered the posters online when I registered for Botcon 2000). I brought my Prime poster to Rhode Island with me to Botcon 2007 to have it signed by Peter Cullen, so I was very happy to finally have a nice frame for it.

This year, I totally splurged and got Chrissy a jewelry armoire. It’s a beautiful piece of mission style furniture, with lots of places to store expensive treasures. Ok, too many places for the too few pieces of jewelry that Chrissy owns. But this gives me an excuse to resort to jewelry for any gift-giving holiday where I can’t be creative enough to come up with something else. So in a way, it’s a gift for me, too, and it matches the rest of the furniture in our house (bonus!).

Chrissy got me an XM radio set from Sam’s Club. I’ve got a setup for the car and a setup for inside the house. You just plug the reciever into the set that you’re currently listening to. We’ve got XM radio in the new Honda CR-V, so I already know that I dig XM. I just have to get everything working now. The car installation looks particularly difficult — I might have to take my Acura to the dealership to get this installed properly.

I also got a set of tapes for Learning Spanish, which I’ve wanted to do for a while, and a books-on-tape version of Jim Cramer’s Mad Money. Chrissy went all out this year. Aiden is getting older every day, so this might be the last year that we can splurge on each other before we start splurging on the boy. Grandma already started, buying Aiden a huge balloon that sings!

Chrissy’s birthday is tomorrow (December 4th), but we usually celebrate it on the weekend before or afterwards with her family. Her parents bought her a water-tight, fire-proof portable safe. It was big enough to put hanging files in and that makes it very heavy (too heavy to have on your lap!).

Her sisters got her some gift cards and some Christmas ornaments. Chrissy got a really nice cake, but I messed up trying to record the candle-blowing on the new camera. I settled for some good still shots.

Afterwards, I gave Chrissy a few things for her birthday: the walkthrough for Neverwinter Nights 2, the “Temporarily Unbounced” Tigger figurine by Enesco, and the “Pooh and Piglet with Cut-out Hearts” figurine by Enesco. She liked them, and I actually remembered to buy a birthday card this year. She says that I’m the best husband ever.