Saturday, June 4, 2011

Happy Birthday to my One & Only

In case you couldn't tell by basically every other post in this blog, I am a woman who is completely, madly, head-over-heels in love. What I don't say often enough is how lucky I am to have a man like Andrew in my life; someone who fights for what he believes in, who is strong yet caring, and absolutely perfect for me in every single way. Forget the Army and separations and deployments... nothing matters to me except for that feeling I get when he wraps his arms around me again and every second, every tear, and every worry of the time we spent apart completely disappears into thin air. I feel so blessed to have found my missing puzzle piece so early in life. I know you are going to say I was way too sappy on this, but Happy Birthday, Andrew, I love you so so much!

A little over a month ago, I started collecting birthday cards from family and friends for my favorite soldier. All told, I received 52 cards. Yup, you read that right. F-i-f-t-y T-w-o!! Enough to make up a whole deck of playing cards! You guys are amazing! I bundled all the cards up, along with some other birthday surprises and sent them off to Afghan-land three weeks ago to allow for ample time for shipping. I was ecstatic when I found out he had gotten the package last Saturday, exactly one week early! Andrew decided to wait until today to open his cards and eat the cake so I don't have anything to report on that yet, but I can't wait to hear what he thinks... more on that later.

I also had a little bit too much spare time on my hands, so instead of designing Save-the-dates one afternoon, I decorated the inside of the care package as well. Your birthday only comes once a year and I love to go all out!

Hope you enjoy pictures in my posts, cause you're about to get a ton of them:


Most of the cards before I sent them out





Ransom note style letter... "Read me first" 


With Andrew's Favorite type of puzzle inside. I used to make these all the time when I was studying in Italy (and one during Recycle at Ranger School) for Andrew to complete. I only gave him one letter and he figured it all out! 


CAKE IN A JAR!! Andrew's favorite- Carrot! I also attached little poems to each gift inside the box!



I had so much batter, I made extras for us to eat back home with the kids. I saved these for today so that we could all be celebrating Uncle AJ's birthday together! For 3-week-old cake, it wasn't half bad!


Fork & Knife to eat it with :)


Candles that spell out his name (the "W" is behind the A, don't worry, he is not going by Andre!)


I really wanted to make my own cream cheese frosting, but all the recipes needed to be refrigerated which is only slightly impossible when shipping packages to Afghanistan... so I settled for Duncan Hines which got the job done.


Red Sox Fans are from Mars, Yankees Fans are from Uranus - Why Red Sox fans are smarter, funnier, and better looking
Couldn't pass this book up!



The inside of the Care Package



...which of course I had to plan out




Stuffed to the brim with goodies and cards!
 Even though I didn't get to talk to Andrew at all on his birthday, I have to keep reminding myself how spoiled we are to get to communicate as often as we do. I took today as just another lesson to never expect anything when it comes to deployments or the Army. Obviously nothing is going to stop because some Lieutenant's fiance somewhere wants to talk to her soldier on his birthday. After being blacked out on May 17th (our weirdly special day, read about it here) and today, I've decided to pre-prepare myself for no communication on my birthday, our pre-versary (1 year til our wedding date), our anniversary and the date he proposed. This way, if I do get to hear from him on these days, I'll be absolutely positively giddy.

So with that, I think I'll call it a night. A million thank-yous to everyone who sent a card for Andrew's birthday and for everyone's continued prayers and support.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

2 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh! The stuff you sent was awesome! But the inside of the box was AMAZING!!!!! That was the most awesome thing I've ever seen! You are so creative! LOVE what you did! My brother is lucky to have a girl like you!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Our son is the luckiest guy in the world to have your love! You are sooo creative and always thinking about what would make him happy. What a lucky guy!!!I hope he sends the box back so we can save it with the cards!

    ReplyDelete