Happy Birthday

Yes! Now he can stop running in his basketball shoes!
This is the first pair of running shoes Chris has EVER owned!

Dazi, Steve, Chris, Jon and our HUGE pizza

Chris and 28" of heaven


We celebrated Chris's birthday yesterday "C-Russ" style.

• slept in until 8:30 (usually he is at work no later than 8)
• ate breakfast Nate made
• played a round of golf at a PGA course with his dad and brother
• played at the beach with the whole family
• ate the biggest pizza we have ever seen, 28", for dinner (see pictures)
  
• ate ice cream cake (even though we were stuffed from the pizza, I had told Nate the day before we could eat dad's cake after we had pizza and he climbed up in his booster seat and said, "Time for dad's cake". It was so cute!)
• finished the day off with a little H3 with his brother (oh yeah and then worked on a brief for about an hour- this guy works too much!)

We were so glad Chris's family could come up to spend the day together. We love living so close to them and will miss Jon and Daz this fall when they go off to school in California and Scotland. I was able to get Chris a really sweet gift this year. Chris LOVES old books and I heard him tell Daz in May when we were out at Duke that he wanted a first edition copy of The Once and Future King (the original story of the sword and the stone pre-Disney) in his library some day..... and I found one!! I got a steal on it too- which is all the better because our student budget does not exactly lend itself to book collecting:)

To finish off this birthday post I will leave you with 25 things you might not know about Chris:

1. He writes beautiful poems to me
2. He writes fiction and right now is currently working on a brilliant story because "he wants to be able to read something he has written to Nate"
3. He addresses cards and letters to me as Jenily- Jen I. L.ove Y.ou
4. He loves watermelon- he will sit down with an entire watermelon and a spoon and just eat away!
5. He runs on a tredmill every night after years of swearing to never run unless it was playing a sport
6. He makes up these silly songs when he sings Nate to sleep and now Nate requests them by name- like the "my mommy is a pirate" song
7.He is teaching himself how to play the guitar
8.He is good at every sport. As a teen he excelled at tennis and soccer but gave them up for basketball and just started playing golf in the last few years
9. He always orders a size bigger than what he wants for his shake or soda because he knows I will want some
10. He is addicted to The Deadliest Catch and Survivor Man or whatever that show is called
11. He only took an internship in the Midwest because I wanted to be by family, he would prefer to live in Hawaii
12. He makes far better pancakes that I do- and makes them all the time because he knows I love them
13. He LOVES his old car "the Flyby" - at 1993 Camry with 280,000+ miles on it and promises to restore it when he has the money
14. he was born premature and turned blue and had to stay in the hospital for a while
15. He loves drinking soda from glass bottles and says "it just tastes better"
16. messes do not bother him at all- I could not clean the house for a month and he wouldn't even notice!
17. He loves to cuddle, except when we sleep- I can't touch him at all- he says I am too hot
18. He misses his friends that have moved away terribly, especially BFF Drew
19. He loves animals. He knows the name to hundreds of obscure animals and all dinosaurs from reading Zoo Books as a kid- this will really be a good dad skill
20. He comes to bed with me every night just to talk for a few minutes even if he has to go back to studying- just so that I end every day with him- and that I go to sleep knowing how much he loves me
21. He tells me he loves me and that I am beautiful at least 10 times EVERY day
22. He can make cheesecake from scratch and it is REALLY good- and he hates it, he does it just for me
23. He has his own pizza recipe that is delicious
24. He is the best dad I have ever known. He is more patient that I am with Nate and way more fun! He can make Nate laugh harder and smile bigger than anyone else
25. He makes me feel so important and loved which means he is a wonderful husband and he can make me laugh harder and smile bigger than anyone else

Okay, I could go on and on and on. but those are the first 25 that came to mind. I hope that it helps you all see how special this man is to me and that my life would not be complete without him. Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!