Marcel's 23rd Birthday

warning! This is a VERY LONG post. I was too lazy to make this into multiple posts but now that I'm done it probably would have been easier to do 4 shorter posts, but hindsight is always 20/20 :)

I have to start by saying that Marcel's birthday has always seemed to get overlooked for one reason or another. I blame it that it has always been so close to our anniversary. When we were dating our anniversary was on May 22nd and now it is May 30th! Last year, we were very strapped for money (it was practically already our money even though we weren't married yet) and wanted any extra money we could find to go towards having fun on our honeymoon in Vegas, so we went to Grease at Keller Auditorium, solely because Pacific's alumni office had a group rate on tickets!

I found myself wanting to fall into that same trap again this year, thinking that we're about to reach our first anniversary as a married couple and I want to do something fantastic but that we don't have a lot of money for that since it is only 1 month after Marcel's birthday. I stood strong and planned Marcel 4 days of birthday activities. They could have all been done in 1 day (except day 1 & 4 would be hard to do together, you'll see below) but it was way more fun to separate each one into it's own day.

Each morning, Marcel got a hand-made card that had a hint for the day in it. I included the hint's in this recap! He also opened a gift around the time we were participating in the activity.

DAY 1: Friday, April 23rd
Hint for today's activity: Check your email! (I had sent him an e-card that had a coupon for a night spent together) more clever hints to come :)
Marcel and I both worked, but I took baby to Fred Meyer for some shrimp so that I could make Marcel a special dinner: Shrimp & Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo! We have fettucini all the time but for me to use shrimp was a huge milestone in our house. I don't eat seafood so he felt honored that I made it for him. I also rented Obsessed, which turned out to be a barely ok movie in my opinion but Marcel seemed to like it. Either way it was so nice to just spend the night together. Marcel had been at church Monday-Wednesday nights until about 9pm and then had class on Thursday night, so this was the first evening we had spent together all week. It is so nice to have such uninterrupted time to reconnect to your spouse!

Marcel after work

probably the most handsome substitute ever

Cooking dinner

gifts and the what-cha-ma-call-it was because coupons made the shrimp more than free and the stores won't actually pay you to shop there, but I had just recently learned that was his favorite candy bar!

His first birthday as a married man!

Day 2: Saturday, April 24th
Hint for today's activity: We'll witness something legal only in the United States & The Republic of the Philippines
We woke up really early and headed to my dad's house so we could walk with him in the March of Dimes 6 mile walk. It was pretty fun and a great cause for us to support--Marcel's brother was born at 32 weeks! We then headed to the park to watch Payton & Presley play in their 2nd softball game ever. It was also pretty fun too. I have spent so many years watching & playing softball so it was nice to get to do that again. Marcel knew about both of those activities, but then we headed home to get ready for the surprise part of the night. Marcel had figured out that we were going to a movie, because what else starts at 7:30 on a Saturday night, and had put a few snacks in my purse to bring (sshh, don't tell!) and when I found them, I said, "oh, these are for the movie?" I GAVE IT AWAY! Ugh, I was so mad at myself because I had caught myself several times all day and this time I finally forgot. He didn't know that we were seeing The Bounty Hunter (where the hint came in--I searched for Bounty Hunter on wikipedia and found that fact). It was a pretty good movie; I was hoping for better but we both enjoyed it!

Old Navy is our favorite, cute and still in our budget, even without my employee discount!

Our SECOND picture in a movie theater

Day #3: April 25th
Hint for today's activity: We'll see what the weather has in store for us!
Church day: Marcel had to be there by 7:45am for pre-service worship team practice as the sound guy so I got up at 6:30 and made home-made hashbrowns for us. They always turn out so good, if I can say so myself, and to think there were many many years of my life when I hated just about any form of potato! Marcel got his card and immediately thought the activity was weather-dependent, which was wrong. I met him at church to attend the 2nd service and after we were done Marcel drove without knowing where we were going, just had to trust my directions. I led him to Dairy Queen where we were going to enjoy Blizzards. I had to explain the clue to him! Blizzards are a weather-related event. I LOVE cookie dough blizzards but there just isn't room in our budget for them too often, but for a birthday it is okay! Later that night we had home group for church which was fun as well. It was only our second time at the group and we already feel so connected to the group. Again, just a really nice day spent together :)
trying for an artistic picture

more in love today than ever before :)

the gift for the day :)

Day #4: April 26th--his actual birthday!
Hint for today's activity: We'll be traveling out of this country!
I had to work this day but Marcel decided not to sub. He asked me Sunday night if he had to work the next day and I got a little frustrated because the school year is almost over and I want him to sub everyday, but when as I was going to bed I realized that I don't like to work on my birthday either, so I couldn't hold a double standard. My mom brought by Marcel some presents this morning, before he had gotten up for the day, so don't be surprised by the picture (she got him the first 4 seasons of Boston Legal). Marcel was awesome enough to mow the lawn and I weeded part of the backyard while baby enjoyed the outdoors. She is SO happy to be outside or shopping; it is wonderful! Baby went home just as my mom was getting here to lend us a weed-eater. We then left for our big adventure. Again, he sort-of knew it was a dinner date because it had been a long time since I had eaten last and he knows me better than to think we were going to do something non-food related without me packing snacks! We went to Jalapeno's, which was somewhere we had never been to before. It was a decent dinner, just made us miss La Sierra in Forest Grove! The best part was that we both brought home left-overs so no cooking the next night. Then we came home, cuddled on the couch and watched Two & A Half Men, just like every other Monday night!

gifts even before getting up for the day

Birthday boy, happy about his drink & his guacamole, oh and probably being with me!

fried ice cream, something neither of us had ever enjoyed before

tribute to early dating years

watching TV at home after a long, but fun weekend!

Thanks to all of the coupon blogs I read I was able to do ALL of this for a very small fraction of what it should have cost.

• The shrimp was free with coupons and I had all the rest of the ingredients in our pantry that I had also gotten for just about free
• Obsessed: free with a Redbox promotion code
• The Bounty Hunter: Buy 1 ticket, Get 1 ticket free when I redeemed 2 of my Tropicana rewards points (I have never gotten a point from buying the juice, instead I just wait for people to post the codes that can be redeemed by everyone to get my points)
• Dairy Queen: Buy 1 Blizzard, Get the 2nd one for $0.25! We splurged for the large sized so we could bring some home, but still paid a little less than what 2 smalls would normally cost us!
• Jalapeno's: Restaurant.com $25 gift certificate for $2 a few weeks ago. It required that we spent $35 and included a 18% tip before the certificate could be used, but it still turned out to be a fantastic deal.
• His present each day was a shirt or sweater that I had gotten at Old Navy, on clearance and with a coupon!
• The Wink photostrip was also 100% free, including shipping

It is fun to spell out how I saved so much money in this birthday, because it makes me realize how far a dollar can go when spent the right way. Now I know I never have an excuse not to treat Marcel to a fantastic birthday every year. Besides he deserves it for how well he treats me each and every day!

I'm Ready

Tonight is the night of the week that Marcel is at school. I used this opportunity to do all the last minute stuff for Marcel's birthday: wrapping gifts and finishing all the cards.

I am so happy with how the cards turned out and while I know Marcel himself is not very artsy/creative outside of music, I know that he'll appreciate the work and time I put into them. It had been a really long time since I had used my Cricut and I don't know why I'm not using it every single day--it's AMAZING! I just wish I was a little more creative to use it to its full potential.

Starting tomorrow, every morning through Monday (his actual birthday) he'll get that day's card which has 1 reason why I love him and the hint for that day's activity. There is also a gift for each day but he doesn't get that until we are in the midst of the assigned activity of the day.

Emily said "4 days worth? wow, you're nice" and I've always tried to do fun things for his birthday, but he's always trumps me. My birthday celebrations have always been better than the ones I planned for him. I'm secretly NOT hoping that this year it will will be different. While I'm very proud and excited for everything I planned and know that he'll love it, I'm turning 25 this year and think that is cause for a pretty big celebration!
The real reason for the post was to get some of the pictures and background explanations posted so when it comes time for the other posts they won't get too terribly long! Here's the first 2 pictures :)


my creativity, as limited as it may be

the gifts!

Blue & Orange Game

In our bag of goodies from Beat Coach Pete we received a ticket to the annual spring BSU game: the Blue & Orange game. Emily didn't want hers so Marcel and I took advantage of our free tickets and had went on a day-long date!

We started out the date by getting our rings cleaned, since we never make it all the way to Boise. When we were in Oregon I got mine cleaned about once a week since it was right down the road from Banana Republic so they were long over-due. We also tried to get them inspected but supposedly our warranties are no longer in the system. Frustrating! We then went to the mall to use my free Victoria's Secret coupon. Picnic lunch in the car on the way to the game. We were there for a very long time. We got there 45 minutes early to get a good seat but then they started almost 45 minutes late! We were even able to go out to dinner thanks to the main sound guy at our new church. Marcel has been doing a lot for him at church as his wife just had a baby and he hasn't been able to do all the services like he normally does. Chili's is so delicious. Plus we have so much leftover, it is 1 less meal I have to cook today :)

On to the fun part of blogging: PICTURES

could not have been a nicer day for a football game

I told Marcel that it was much nicer than having to be bundled up under a million blankets

the action

Marcel was so interested in this guy's job

he was the timing guy who made sure they knew where there would be TV timeouts for commercials, supposedly its a very important job with a lot of money in it since the momentum of a game can make the difference between a win and a loss...after Marcel was explained it to me I said, "so they owe their win at the Fiesta Bowl to him, because without him they may have lost a few games and would have never made it to the bowl game." That is probably not entirely true, but I'll always look for this guy now!

The final score: home was the offense and guest was the defense. The defense scored points for defensive things like forcing turnovers, sacs, 3 & outs, stopping a 4th down attempt. I'm still going with the fact that he was just upset he lost! They had to do a tie-breaker of a 2 point conversion--succeeding got the offense 2 points and a stop got the defense 2--it was a defensive stop so they won! They were the side that I chose to win because as I explained it to Marcel, they rarely have an opportunity to score points in a normal game. I was under the assumption that we were betting, meaning Marcel had the offensive, but as it turns out, he never agreed to having the offense, so no bet. I think he was just upset he lost. Even though I said the loser was buying dinner--we had giftcards so it didn't really matter--it was his pride that was threatened :)

Beat Coach Pete...not quite

Today, Emily and I headed out to BSU for the "Beat Coach Pete" 5K. We were both a little nervous after our day yesterday (Friday). We got together for our last training run Thursday night and during it I did something to my knee. It hurt so bad. Friday I spent the day trying really hard not to limp so that I could possibly have a chance at running the race. Emily woke up Friday not feeling well and stayed home from work. Yeah, we were nervous, but in those circumstances we had some reason for it.

I woke up this morning at 6am (only so Marcel could take me to Emily's house before he had to head to school) and immediately put ice on my knee and took some ibuprofen. I promised myself that I was at least going to try to run.

When we got there they had the cheerleaders/dance team doing zumba to warm us all up, but nearly every participant just stood there watching, so Emily and I went on a very short walk and got back to find our place in line. I thought we were pretty close to the front, but once the horn went off and it took forever for us to have room to start running, I realize we could have been a lot closer.

I started running and felt pretty good. I should mention that I've had my fair share of knee problems, and even had surgery on the one that's hurting now years ago, so my mom had found my old knee brace (it was still really new looking which really surprised me). The brace was probably my saving grace. There were a few times when I was hurting, but not as bad as it had been while running on Thursday so I just kept pushing through. After 8 weeks of training, I did not want to be walking, and I didn't want to let Emily down and make her walk which she had agreed to do if I needed to.

The run was actually pretty easy. It was a great route, and the general race atmosphere was great. I didn't see the "Mile 1" sign, but was really surprised at how fast "Mile 2" came around. It was fun to have part of the marching band playing as we crossed the finish line. Seems cheesy now, but it in the moment it felt like they were playing for no one except me!

I am proud to say that we crossed the finish line in 32:30!!

I haven't seen it on the news yet and the after-party was boring so I'm not sure how fast Coach Pete was, but the website said he was aiming for 26-27 minutes

We had been running 30 minutes at a time, but had yet to drive our route to see if we were actually going 3 miles, and I was secretly hoping to make it in that amount of time. I'm proud of myself and Emily either way, but we did decide that if we wouldn't have had to wait so long to start that would have saved us some time. Also since we weren't super close to the front, there was a long time of trying to go around people as we went from a road to narrow paths before the crowd got more spread out. If we were to go do it tomorrow we would easily make it in 30 minutes. We're going to do the Boise Race for the Cure on May 8th and then after that begins my training for longer races, including a 10K a training for my half-marathon! I never thought there would be a day in my life that I'd enjoy running, but after these 8 weeks and especially after today, I proudly say I do.

We didn't take any pictures because I wasn't going to run with my camera but when I got home I took a picture of my number. Maybe in the next few days I'll add a picture of me wearing my awesome new t-shirt that says "I'll beat Pete next year"

Easter & Updates

We didn't do anything too terribly exciting for Easter. We went to church together Saturday night, so I could enjoy sleeping in on Sunday morning, while Marcel got up to work the sound booth for the Sunday services. Saturday was our last day of fasting. I'm proud to say that we made it and did really good!

We had lunch at my mom's house and played a few card games before Marcel had some homework to finish. We did none of the "traditional" Easter stuff. We didn't dye eggs, we didn't make Easter baskets. I thought about making us some really fun baskets but time escaped me. Saturday night, though, Marcel did ask if he was going to have a basket and then put me in charge of the holiday traditional stuff like Easter baskets and Christmas stockings. Good thing I can do things without much notice, not!! I've been meaning to head to the stores this week and look for some clearance stuff for next year but haven't gotten that far. Maybe tonight. We have dyed eggs together before, but I think a lot of that stuff will be more fun when we have little ones to do it with, and again that's just not in the foreseeable future :)

(Nice little reminder, wasn't it?)

Like always, I did make Marcel pose for a picture, so it seemed like we did something on Easter. We only took one and I think it turned out decent...

UPDATES

I guess nothing to major to report here, it just feels like it has been forever since I've posted anything about what's going on here in Idaho. I'm in the middle of my 3rd week watching baby Lilli. I've had her just 4 days a week so far, but next week it will be all 5 days. I'm having a lot of fun, enjoying the practice for the FUTURE, and praying already that my children will be more scheduled than this little one! I've started to get a lot accomplished while she sleeps which is a huge blessing. It is so nice to have the housework done and dinner started when Marcel gets home from work so that we can have our evenings together without any of those distractions. Marcel has also really enjoyed having Lilli here. Even if he's gone most of the day working, she's still here when he gets home. He's going to be a great dad ONE DAY! I'd never seen him with babies, but he's wonderful :)

I've made it almost 8 weeks through the Couch to 5K running program. Since volleyball and softball in HIGH SCHOOL, I've always told myself and others that I hated running and that it hurt my knees too badly to do it. That was part true, but now I know it was just a really lame excuse ;) The program is actually 9 weeks, but since my sister (Emily) and I are running a 5K this Saturday, I skipped week 8 of running 28 minutes and went straight to week 9, running 30 minutes straight. It's been a major accomplishment for me. If you are unaware of the program, I'll just tell you that on week 1 you start running just 60 seconds at a time and back then I thought I'd die just doing that. I'm so proud of myself for this step I've made in my life. It feels so GREAT to be treating my body so well. Now I just need to tune up my eating habits a bit and I'll be all-around healthy. I am reminded almost daily by Marcel that I have a pretty big birthday approaching; I'll be 25 in September. I was trying to pretend like it doesn't freak me out, but it actually kinda does, so in honor of getting old, I'm going to run a half-marathon. I haven't looked into any dates yet, but just want to finish one while I'm 25! Marcel started the running with me, but after a few weeks of shin-splints and other injuries, he's just been going on a nice long walk everyday I run. Now I'd like us to go on walks together even on my days off. Slowly but surely we'll get there!

Marcel is doing fantastic in school. 2 classes completed and 2 A's. That's right he has a 4.0!! He's very proud of himself for that major accomplishment. He is still subbing for the Vallivue School District and went into Caldwell's district office a few weeks ago while the sub coordinator was on maternity leave. She returned the week before spring break, so she called Marcel in to get all squared away on new-hire paperwork so he can sub for them too. It's nice that they pay better, but they only call out for subs, which isn't as nice as what Vallivue has. While he was in the office, though, they were super excited to learn that he's a music guy. Turns out they have 2 music teachers retiring after this school year and they really want to hire Marcel. The school district administrators are in contact with George Fox to make arrangements for everything he'd have to do on a special schedule to make it possible for him to be teaching full-time next fall, even though he will not have completed his school (won't be done until May 2011) and will need a provisional license. It's crazy to me that they were so excited about offering him a job already (he'd still have to apply and interview, but I think it is just a formality) without knowing anything about him, besides that he wants to be a music teacher! We're still praying that everything works out the right way, not our way! It would be a huge blessing to have him working full-time, but this may not be the job God wants him to take.

Oh, that reminds me that I'm starting another job search and so is Marcel. He'll have a really hard time finding sub jobs when school isn't in session, so he's applying for the Boys & Girls Clubs in this area, that was his summer job back in Washington for many years. We have our fingers crossed for that! I'm looking for a night job. See, if Marcel doesn't get the real teaching position, he starts his first round of student teaching in November-ish, and the program "allows" you to work during that placement because you aren't the full-time teacher, but since Marcel works in schools subbing, he can't sub and do his observations, so I need another job to make up for the income of his we'll be losing. Plus, after that placement he starts full-time student teaching and they've said from the very beginning that you can't have another job during that placement. We know everything will work out just fine, because God is in control and we've been faithful with our tithing, but I still want to feel prepared and know that we did everything we could for the future.

Sorry that turned out to be so long even though I had nothing to report!