26

Today is the 26th birthday of a very special person.

 26 things I LOVE about my amazing husband...in no particular order :)

1) you make me smile and laugh more than anyone else I know...daily occurrence

2) you are so devoted to our relationship and marriage

3) tall. dark. very handsome :)

4) I trust your opinion more than anything 

5)  I love the way you love me...I am the luckiest girl in the world

6) you can be on the same level as our nieces and nephews during playtime, but then talk theory and business with the best of them the next minute 

7) your cooking is the bomb

8) the way you look on the Harley

9) I am the most comfortable with you

10) you once told me I looked cute as I ran out of the house in workout pants, a sweatshirt, and a Purdue hat

11) you would do anything for me, your family, or your friends

12) the little things make you happy

13) you are my "Mr. Fix-It"
14) your laugh. oh I love it.  you can be laughing at the dumbest thing, but I can't help but laugh just as hard simply by hearing you
15) you are my protector. I feel so safe with you.
16) family man
17) dog whisperer...how do you do it?
18) the way you preventively hold down my arm and cautiously come close in to give me a kiss "good-bye" in the morning while I am still asleep (so I don't accidentally whack you in face or mess up your hair which seems to be the norm with me)
19) our conversations while you are talking in your sleep
20) I am so very excited to see you as a father to our children someday
21) you know me so well...like creepily well...and I love it
22) you will watch my brainless shows with me (Hello Real Housewives!)
23) you are my very best friend in the entire world
24) I know I can always depend on you for anything
25)  your surprises
26) everything...I could not ask for more :)

Happy 26th Birthday to the best husband in the world!

update

I am a little slow on the blogging.  It's times like this that a nice little hodge-podge of updates will do.

Here's whats going on these days around the Dunn household...

*Matt is loving his job as a supervisor at UPS.  His hours are weird, but it allows us more time together which is awesome.  He goes in at 2 am on Monday and then 4 am Tuesday through Friday.  Gets off by 10 am on Monday and 12 noon Tuesday-Friday.   Weekends and holidays off.  He is loving the type of work and is doing a great job at it.  Minimal stress and no need to bring work home..the best part :).

*We are slowing down in the NICU.  This Spring and Summer we were steady at 65-75 babies and the need for us to work overtime was high.  I worked a ton of overtime all Summer and am finally getting a break.  We are down to 45-55 babies right now.  Still a lot, but low for us.  It is nice though to give nurses a chance to have a day off if we don't need all nurses on that shift that day.  A much-deserved breather.  I feel like we can all rejuvenate and get ready for the next blast of busyness.   I am still loving my job.  I actually got the chance to do some new employee orientation in the past couple months.  I oriented a new Student Nurse and also a new Registered Nurse for a couple days.  I really love teaching and orienting new people to the unit.  Just like I love having students follow me.  

*I have been getting some great experiences teaching BodyPump.  I have my class every Monday and then I have been subbing at least one class/week.  This past week, I accidentally offered to teach 2 classes in one day...one at 9:30 am and the other at 5:30 pm.  Whoops. It's such an awesome hobby to have.

*Jax is as cute as ever.  I told Matt the other day that I love him more and more every day...he looked at me like I was crazy.  I don't know what I would do without a dog.  I never really thought I wanted one, but now that we have him I can't imagine not.  We almost got another dog a couple months ago, but I am glad we didn't.  I would love for Jax to have a buddy, I'm sure he'd be so happy, but I just don't want to do that whole training thing all over again.  Plus, we don't need the added expense right now.  So I guess I'll just stick to being his best friend :)

*We got sucked into an "Extreme Couponing" marathon today.  This show is crazy.  It makes me feel inadequate as a shopper.  I've used coupons before, but nothing like these people.  Their "stockpiles" are impressive and the money they save is insane.  A lady on there bought $906 worth of groceries for only $25...which was the tax and that is it.  This other lady had 31 separate transactions just to save more money.  I can't imagine being that cashier.

*I am not excited for Winter, cold weather, or snow...but I am excited to decorate for Christmas.  It's been an off-year for me as far as seasonal decorating.  My favorite season to decorate for is Fall. I tried to decorate for Fall, but Matt put all the decorations up in the attic one day and I don't feel like bugging him day after day to get it down.  So no Fall decorations this year.  I blame the move. 

*I love our house.  It becoming a home and I love it.  We are doing little projects here and there and checking things off the to-do list.  I'll post on our latest project this week.  

*I am super excited that my friend Abby is coming to visit in November.  She booked a last minute plane ticket to come up for the Purdue vs. Ohio State game.  Good ole' West Lafayette fun :)  Our other friends from nursing school, Amy and Kylie, are able to come too! A lot of our friends are going to be there as well. It will be so fun to get everyone together!

*I love watching all the babies grow.  A lot of girls at work have had babies and I love seeing their updates.  I especially love watching Madilyn grow.  It's so fun to have a best friend have a baby. My friend Ashley is such an awesome mom to baby Madilyn.  She is getting so big!  I need photo updates at least daily :).

I love the feeling that everything is slowing down and we can spend more time just "being".  It's fabulous :)

promotions and settling in

A couple weeks ago, Matt was promoted to a Supervisor position at UPS!  I actually thought I had already blogged about all this, but since I haven't here's a belated update...

His bosses at UPS saw something in him from the very first day he interviewed.  They asked him what his thoughts were on management at some point while working at UPS during his first interview.  I guess everyone else sees in him what I do :).  He rocked it out his first couple weeks there and he was getting more attention from his superiors.  They made comments to him almost nightly about how they thought he belonged in management and how good of an employee he was. He was even mistaken for an under cover corporate member at one of his trainings because he "looked the part".  After a couple weeks, his supervisor approached him with an application for the management program and encouraged him to apply.  After much debate, we decided it was a good step to apply.  He applied for the position and waited.

Matt started to catch wind about lay offs coming for drivers some time soon.  With him being the lowest man on the totem pole, he would have been the first one cut.  He got a phone call from the district manager one afternoon asking him to come in for a meeting.  At first, we were both so excited since we believed this could be a meeting about the management application.  Once he got there, Matt texted me after he remembered the news about the lay offs.  We were both pretty sure he had been called in to be laid off that day instead of talking about management.  The high turned very low.

A couple hours later, I got a phone call once he was done with his meeting.  After making it sound like not-so-great news, he surprised me with the news that he had been promoted to a supervisor!  I am so proud of him.  This is exactly where he is supposed to be right now.  He already has all these ideas of ways to improve things at work.   The hours are a little funny right now, but we see each other way more and even get to have dinner together some nights :).  It's been such a long time since we could do that!  

We are finally getting settled into the house.  The walls finally have some stuff hanging on them and we even hosted our first get-together this weekend. The Mays and Marandos joined us for an awesome night out by the fire with pizza and a late night soak in the hot tub :).  It was so awesome to get to hang out with them and to catch up on everything.  I can't wait for more fun nights in our back yard with friends.

I'm settling in to my new side job as well....teaching BodyPump.  It's still going really well and I absolutely love being a part of the team.  I love getting up there and teaching.  I love motivating others to get stronger and get in shape.  My favorite time is talking with the participants after class and really making relationships with them.  This Saturday is the Quarter 3 launch!  We have 4 launches a year with the new release-new music and new choreography that we make big plans for and put on a good weekend.  I am actually getting to be part of launch this time! I teach with another instructor on Saturday at 9 am.  Our theme for this launch is Go Pink! for breast cancer awareness month so we got super cute tanks made to wear.  Matt and my mom are actually coming down to do launch with me. I am really excited to see if any of my Monday regulars come on Saturday :)

anniversary + touristy

Last weekend, we celebrated our one year wedding anniversary!  Last Sunday also marked our seventh year together.  It's crazy to think back to when we very first started dating and then to see how far we've come.  I love him so much.

We started off our anniversary celebration weekend by going to BodyPump on Saturday morning.  I love when Matt takes the class with me. Then we came home to get ready to head downtown.  Our first stop was Easley Winery in downtown Indy.  We had driven by it a few times, but never been. We took the tour and then stayed to do a little tasting.  The winery was really cool and the wine was yummy of course :).  After the winery we made our way down to the Canal Walk. On the way down there, we stopped at Monument Circle to take a picture for our one year.  Matt proposed at Monument Circle 2 years ago and it's a special place for us. I have really been wanting to go down and walk the canal, but we haven't had the chance yet. The weather was gorgeous on Saturday and it was so nice to be outside walking around.  The canal is so pretty and it's a really cool atmosphere down there.  We walked all the way down to the zoo and took a bunch of pictures.  Matt was such a good sport with my excessive picture taking. We were being tourists in our own town :).

We came back to the house to get dressed up for dinner and then made our way back down to Fogo De Chao.  It's a Brazilian steakhouse and it's absolutely amazing.  We thoroughly stuffed ourselves and I loved every minute.  They have a big salad bar with really good salads, cheeses, and veggies.  After we ate our salads, we started with the crazy meat shenanigans.    They give you a card with one side being red and one green.  When you are ready for the main course, you flip your card to green and they are there immediately with your side dishes and the guys start coming one by one with the meat selections.  There were like 12 different kinds of meat ranging from a type of brazilian prepared steak (our fav!) to filet mignon to bacon wrapped chicken and parmesan pork tenderloin.  Matt was in heaven.  At the end of dinner, our waiter asked if we wanted dessert (does ANYONE get dessert there? there should be no room left in your gut!) and she chuckled as we said no way.  The next thing we knew she brought out a huge piece of yummy chocolate layer cake with "Happy Anniversary" written on it.  Yes,  we ate all of it but a couple bites, and yes I finished it off later that night.  

On Sunday, we went down to Oliver Winery.  We had planned to ride the motorcycle, but the weather had other plans.  We made our first trip to Oliver two years ago on our anniversary and got there close to closing time so this time we wanted to be able to spend a good part of the day there.  We love Oliver.  We were able to take the tour this time which was awesome and then we got to do tasting in the private cellar.  The lady saw us wandering around trying to find a spot to get in to taste and she invited us to the cellar to taste. Awesome! It was really cool being in there.  Our lady was very generous and so I think I tried just about every white wine on the list.  We grabbed a bottle of wine and went out to enjoy it on the patio overlooking the pond.  I love just "being" with Matt.  It doesn't matter what we are doing, it's just more fun with him by my side.

We spent a couple hours at Oliver and then traveled back home where Matt and I made homemade sushi rolls! Matt started doing this a couple weeks ago and we are starting to get pretty crafty.  Well, he is.  I don't do a whole lot besides give ideas and maybe roll a few :).  We made like 7 or 8 rolls and some fried rice and then demolished them.  Of course, we then rolled out our top layer of wedding cake for dessert :).

Happy 1 year!

Anniversary picture at Monument Circle- 01

Tour at Easley

Cheers!

Canal!

Being touristy

Off to dinner at Fogo!

yummm

This horse drawn carriage had a sign with "Happy Anniversary"on the back...I said "Why, thank you!" :)

Oliver Winery...

Wine tasting in the cellar

Smelling the wine

Time for some sushi!

Wedding cake :)

The red velvet tried to stain the frosting

Happy 1 year to the best husband in the world!

one year

I just can't even believe it has been one year since I married my best friend and seven years since we first started dating.  Our wedding day was by far the best day of my life (so cliche', but it so was) and I am so thankful to have Matt as my husband. He makes me a better person and we are learning and growing every day.  I am so proud of him and love him more than I ever thought was possible.

Rewind one year and we were at Riehle Plaza saying our vows, sharing moments with friends and family, and dancing the night away.  I love reliving the memories through our awesome pictures and our hilarious wedding videos.  I can vividly remember seeing each other for the first time, walking down the aisle to his smiling face, my dad telling me not to cry because then he would start, kissing as husband and wife, and then celebrating all night long.  I hope I never forget how it all felt.  Link here to see my post from the wedding
( 9.18.10 ).

 

Happy Anniversary Matthew! I love you :)