He was pretty happy to make it back in time and we decided to have all of our friends over to celebrate his return and his birthday all in one.
I had secretly been saving for months and one by one I purchased each of the three units for his HUGE b-day/welcome home gift.
He was pretty impressed when he discovered what was waiting in the garage for him...
A new TOOL CHEST :) and a work stool!
I'll be the first to admit that this gift has some selfish intentions behind it. See, I grew up with a father who organized his garage down to the spare tire pressure caps.
There was a place for everything and everything in its place *a treasured dad-ism*
So naturally it drove me crazy to have to dig through 25 year old tackle boxes repurposed as tool and -God only knows what else- holders. This new tool chest has been great although I did not expect Nathan to walk into the house after filling it up with tools to say
"I'm gonna need more tools to fill this thing!"
He sounded like he legitimately believed this so I'm a bit concerned now.
His birthday party announcement was left to him to get out so of course no one knew about it until around 24 hrs before it would start. We didn't hear back from many people and around 6pm we sat in our empty house wondering if we would be left to eat the brisket, mountains of potato salad and grilled veggies Nathan had been working on all afternoon.
Everyone seemed to arrive at once after 7pm, more than we thought could show we able to make it so we had more than enough mouths to feed.
Being a perfect opportunity to flex my baking muscles I planned a ridiculous birthday cake for Nathan only to be told the day before that he no longer enjoyed frosting as much as he did when he was a kid and this year he wanted strawberries and whipped topping. He told me to do whatever I wanted with those two requirements.
Ugh! I didn't know what to do so I kinda made it up as I went along. I ended up with a variation on a vanilla bean pound cake recipe. I added seedless strawberry preserves, sour cream, vanilla bean paste as well as vanilla extract and a splash of raspberry extract.
For the "frosting" I whipped about 4.5 cups of heavy whipping cream until I very nearly made butter. It was a stout whipped cream. I added Splenda, pureed fresh strawberries and a block of cream cheese.
I'm not typically this blunt but I ROCK. It was soooo good.
Later I would discover that Nathan had a gift for ME?!
A friend of ours, Brooke, is always wearing the most unique jewlery. I finally asked her about the earrings she was wearing one day and she told me her mother made them. They were the sweetest earrings I'd ever seen, so simple and beautiful. I've never been one to look at a piece of jewlery and think "I HAVE to have that." This was the first time.
I linked her moms website with a photo of the earrings to my amazon list so I wouldn't forget. But it was Nathan who did not forget.
He left them for me one night tied to my toothbrush.
Typical Nathan, he told me my breath was horrible and that I absolutely HAD to go brush my teeth... and there they were. He set up the whole purchase while he was still overseas.
Despite their understated look they are now the most expensive piece of jewlery I own aside from my wedding ring. They are sterling silver and hollow so they're nearly weightless.
I love love love them! :)
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