the.prodigal.blogger

so yeah, ive been on hiatus for the last couple of weeks i guess. although to be fair, theres been a lot going on and not much of it was all that interesting. so why dont we play the catch-up game anyway, hm?

well the week after the parents-in-law left, we were pretty exhausted from the visit and didnt do much of anything. we just tried to recuperate and gear up for the upcoming holiday weekend... which holiday weekend you ask? well im glad you did... the 678 holiday of course ;]

for those of you that are totally clueless and are checking your calendars to try and figure out what the hell im talking about, ill try and make this as painless as possible for you. 678 = 06.07.08 = june, 7th 2008 = karen and i's anniversary. caught up yet? so anyway, the upcoming sunday was our anniversary and while we hadnt really planned anything spectacular i did have to play romance and prepare a little bit for the 1year milestone. well at first i had no clue what to get the wifey for our first anniversary so of course, i called the expert on "traditional" wedding/anniversary/other sappy stuff customs and rituals - i.e. mom. well she was excited that id even ask her opinion, but i had to start somewhere right? well she was not much help when it comes to the "traditional" crap because, well, karen and i arent very traditional and we could really care less.. however she did give me a tiny bit of inspiration and well, as moms do, plenty of shoving in the directions she thought was the best. she was just convinced that i needed to do some really sappy crap and was really pushing for it and as usual i ignored her and she has yet to let me forget it [i doubt she ever will] but we'll come back to that later. so after my twinge of inspiration for a gift the rest started falling into place and i quickly planned out all the steps id need to take to make my wife pleased with me. [which to be quite honest, doesnt take much... im loved.] so wednesday after work i went out and got her gift and it really couldnt have been easier. she had class from before i got off work till 9:30 that night and would have no clue what i was up to so secrecy was definitely on my side.

so as the weekend approached i planned a little more and shed been dropping hints about wanting to go on a picnic on our anniversary, so really... i didnt have to try much at all - shes easy to please. saturday night we decided to go out to dinner for our "anniversary dinner out" but really we just didnt feel like cooking and it seemed like a reasonable excuse to go out to dinner. it wasnt anything super spectacular, but we went to a little german/hungarian restaurant in town that we'd never been to and shed wanted to try and we had a nice little dinner complete with chocolate cake.

sunday, the real surprises all happened and it started bright and early in the morning. i woke up and snuck out of bed and went downstairs to get started making her breakfast. well luckily she apparently had no idea id even left, so i was able to get quite a bit of breakfast started and the coffee made before she popped in to ruin her breakfast surprise - waffles. now i dont want to brag here, but i make awesome waffles. thats really all there is to say on the subject, its always been a little something i was good at, and i usually reserve it for special occasions. well, just to connect the dots for you, i had snuck out of bed and made her waffles the first day of our honeymoon so this was just a little allusion to that. whether or not she picked up on that is irrelevant, she was definitely surprised and was still trying to figure out how id gotten out of bed without her noticing and was very pleased to see what id been up to. and, as it turns out, this batch of waffles was one of my best yet ;]

so while she was enjoying her breakfast i snuck upstairs and retrieved her hidden present and then snuck up behind her and presented the gift. well now she was just giggling with delight, she thought the breakfast was her gift, lol! so she opened her present and "oo"ed and "ah"ed at its contents - some new perfume and lotion and a little travel bag with travel sized goodies in it as well all from victoria's secret. well if you dont know my wife, she LOVES perfumes and well, really anything scented. her "scents" as she lovingly refers to them. so she was quite delighted by all her new goodies and a little bonus, the bottle of perfume i happened to get was kind of a throwback and had the old-timey mist pump on it - very karen - and she loved it. =] so i got plenty of hugs and smooches after that.

well, even though it was our anniversary, it was still a typical weekend, so we had already planned to run some errands before our picnic and that was up next on the list of things to do. after relaxing a little and then getting dressed we headed out to run our 3 errands for the day. first, i needed a haircut because i was starting to get a little shaggy, but mostly because brother's wedding was in 2 weeks and i needed to be trimmed and have time to let my hair get to a good length before the festivities. so our first stop was the salon where i got all prettied up and actually had probably the best haircut ive had since leaving my favorite stylist of all time back in denver... [miss you chris!!] anyhoo, so i was looking good and karen was all smiley with my sexy haircut and we made our next stop - the grocery store. if you havent been reading long, or just havent ever paid attention, we go to the grocery store every sunday, its just out little weekly tradition, so we were picking up all our usual groceries, plus a bunch of extra fancy goodies for our special picnic lunch. so we got some really nice bread and fancy cheeses and meats and some fruit, spreads, crackers, etc. all the stuff you have to have on a picnic of course!

well the more we shopped i could tell the wife was getting more excited, it had actually been a while since our last picnic and she loves them [not to mention they're one of our "things" you know? most couples have little couple-y hobbies they really enjoy doing together ranging anywhere from just hanging out watching tivo on a saturday night to date nights to extreme stuff like skydiving, and well picnics have just always been one of ours since we started dating. but i digress...] so after we finished shopping we quickly took care of errand #3 - the weekly gassing up the truck, and then we went home to unload and pack up for the picnic. well karen had only mentioned that she wanted to go on a picnic but hadnt really said where, so the last little bit of my planning was coming up with a fun place for us to go. cincinnati is known for having a few hills, im not sure how many - 8? - and a few of them have little parks on them. well the first picnic we had in cincy was at eden park which is basically on mount adams so continuing in that tradition i decided we were going to go to mt. airy park which is just on the opposite side of northside where we live, so not far at all. we'd discovered that the park was there on accident one night when we went exploring for the fun of it up mt. airy, and we'd been planning to go back at some point - obviously this was the perfect time to do so.

so we headed up to mt. airy and leisurely drove around the park exploring all the different little paths and picnic areas until we found one that was perfect. after quickly unloading and spreading out we started our picnic and enjoyed it for the next few hours. all our snacks were quite delicious and we'd both brought little things to read and relax and of course i had my camera so i took plenty of pictures as we just enjoyed our time together, some light conversation, a little napping, a little sunning, you know... picnic stuff =]

so a few hours later we were both sufficiently picnic-ed and decided to pack it up and make a quick stop at this park treehouse we'd passed on the way in and wanted to check out. as it turns out the treehouse was really cool and we both really liked it and i took plenty more pictures, haha. after the treehouse we decided to drive around the park exploring a little more and found a couple of little lodges tucked hidden away in the trees that were pretty cool and an arboreum that was pretty cool before we decided we were done for the day.

and well, that was about it, haha. i know its not really anything all that exciting but we just hung out together doing things we enjoy doing and it was a really nice time. i dont think it could have been a better first anniversary, it was just very us. =] oh and i forgot to mention, the thing i didnt do that my mother was so insistent about was write karen a love poem. soooo sappy... and after i gave karen her present i mentioned that my mom had wanted me to write her the poem and she agreed... really not her thing. so as it turns out, i know my wife pretty well afterall, haha ;] sorry mom! =P

well since then, on tuesday karen left for the summer. i think ive mentioned before that she was going to san francisco this summer, but just in case i havent let me quickly explain. basically in addition to getting a masters degree in architecture here in cincinnati, karen decided that she also wanted a masters in fine arts and at some point during her researching she found a program from the sanfran art institute [which is apparently a pretty good school for that sort of thing] that lets you get a masters and really works with you on the time thing. basically you only have to be at the school for 2 summers full time and then you can do the rest remotely so shes going to be able to do both degrees simultaneously. anyway, tuesday was her flight out and after a few tears and lots of goodbyes she flew out. she arrived in sanfran at around 11pm western time and has since gotten to her summer apartment and gone to a bunch of orientations and gotten pretty well settled in. so far she seems to love it out there. shes had some little issues with her computer, as it turns out her harddrive decided to completely crash but luckily she had most of her stuff backed up on an external. also, just a crazy coincidence, chance and claire our fellow bloggers and friends from austin [see my links list for their blogs], are vacationing in san francisco right now and apparently karen hooked up with them last night for dinner and to hang out a little, so thats pretty cool. =]

well... i guess thats about it for now. theres really not all that much going on here. just trying to keep myself entertained and busy with work for the most part. i dont have anything planned for this weekend so i dont know what ill end up doing, but im sure it wont be terribly interesting. next weekend however, is josh and cassie's wedding and im sure there will be tons of fun and festivities involved. for those of you i'll get to see at the wedding i cant wait, its been a long time!

alright, thats all ive got. hope youre all having a great week!

post.script: yeah i totally forgot to bring any pictures with me to work today, so i'll have to upload some later for you. sorry!