Posts
I was finally able to give Mandi her anniversary presents tonight! I was waiting for one of them to come in the mail and the special day falling on a Sunday didn't help in that department. But, her reaction was all I needed to know that it was worth the wait. For those of you who don't know, the first year anniversary is also known as the "paper" anniversary. Mandi and I had been racking our brains to come up with some creative gifts to exchange for weeks now and I was so glad that the moment finally arrived.
Her first gift was a stroke of luck that I happened upon while cleaning out our "catch-all" closet a couple weeks ago. You know, that closet that gets all of the stuff that doesn't have anywhere else to go. Well, we had been putting stuff in our catch-all closet since May 22nd of last year and it finally got to the point to where I couldn't look at it anymore. While I was cleaning it out, I stumbled upon Mandi's college diploma. One thing you must know is that one of the first things that drew me to Mandi, and ultimately made me fall in love with her, was her drive, focus and the fact that she's super smart. To me, her college diploma is very representative of that. The fact that it also says Summa Cum Laude is just icing on the cake (I had to brag on her a bit). So I bought a decent looking frame, threw her diploma in it and told her how much I loved her brains. That my friends was gift number one.
Gift number two was a little more difficult to put together. I also need to give you a little bit of a back story. When Mandi and I were pretty fresh in our relationship (about 6 months into it), we took a cross-country road trip. On this road trip we listened to a lot of music. One of the artist we listened to a ton was Corey Crowder (listen to his music here and visit his site here). Our favorite song during that road trip was a son that he sings called "Starting Forever". We actually commented to each other that that song would be a perfect first dance song for a newly married couple. Well, as fate, luck, love and determination would have it - we ended up being that couple. We even convinced Corey and his wife Laney to attend our wedding AND to sing that song live as our first dance song. And it's not like they could just roll out of bed and do it - they had to fly across the country to be at our wedding and with our eternal gratitude actually made it work! Not only does Corey and Laney hold a special place in our heart, but the song "Starting Forever" does as well.
I reached out to Corey and Laney a couple of weeks ago to help me out with my second gift. I asked if Corey could scribble down the lyrics to our first dance song on a piece of paper that I could frame in our house. Being the awesome guy that he is, he obliged and today it arrived in the mail. Corey took the time to hand write the lyrics out and also included a special message to both Mandi and I. Like I told Laney, just the fact that I thought of this gift would be what would blow Mandi away. I'm not the most thoughtful or romantic guy on the block, but after hours upon hours this is what I came up with for my "paper" gift. Let me just say - it's as if I gave Mandi solid gold. When she opened it up and realized what it was, tears were streaming down her face and she could barely get out the words to tell me how special it was. Mission accomplished.
Thank you again to Corey, Laney and my one good idea a year :)
**Oh yeah, and as a bonus, I bought a powerball ticket for our anniversary and won 103 bucks!!
