David and I were talking about a people that break up when they’re engaged, and I discovered something quite interesting about my easy-going, generous, kind husband: when it comes to breaking up, he is very monetary person.

I said if a woman breaks it off with a man, she should give the ring back. If he breaks up with her, then she can keep it. David said, “Yeah, but you should also give back any expensive gifts when you break up.”

“Like the digital camera I bought you the Christmas we were engaged?”

“Oh, no. That cost less than $500.”

“What?! You have a dollar limit? So anything under $500 you you get to keep?”

“Yeah.”

“That camera was the most expensive thing I could afford to buy you at the time!” (David was looking over my shoulder as I was typing this. He told me the camera wasn’t a $3,000 camera I was still paying off. I asked him what $3,000 dollar item he was still paying off and he replied, “No one’s ever broken up with me.” Good grief, David!)

He shrugged. I guess David expected me to keep a list of the gifts he gave me while we were dating and their value. This was so strange and funny to me.

So what do you think? Is there a dollar limit? If you broke up with your boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancee how would you decide what gifts you’d give back?

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Fourteen Reasons Why My Husband is the Best

1. He doesn’t mind watching chick flicks with me, and he even likes watching “The Notebook”.

2. He asks if there’s anything he needs to pick up on his way home from work.

3. He is ALWAYS willing to order takeout if I’ve had a bad day. Actually, he’d eat out every meal if I let him, but it is so nice knowing he’s just as happy with pizza as he is with a gourmet meal.

4. He knows how to do so much around the house. With his arthritis, there are a lot of big projects he can no longer do, but when I can’t get my garage door to go down, one phone call to David and he’s got it figured out. It’s always amazing to me how he knows how to shut off the water and replace brake lights.

5. He takes care of me when I’m sick. I used to get food poisoning all the time. (Seriously, don’t eat anything in an office kitchen. People are so nasty.) David would take off work so he could bring me Sprite and crackers.

6. He likes me better without makeup.

7. He prefers me to wear my hair in a ponytail.

8. He saw “Twilight” and “New Moon” with me. And he went out in the middle of the night to buy “Twilight” on Blu-Ray because I thought the stores would sell out quickly. They didn’t.

9. He’s so stinkin’ tall.

10. He has brown hair and a red beard.

11. Right after high school, he wanted to grow a beard. I whined and griped about how much I hated it. After a few weeks, he trimmed it to a goatee, and I love it. Now he wants to get rid of it, but I beg him not to.

12. He makes me laugh.

13. His sense of humor. He brought the best gag gift to our extended family’s gag gift exchange this year. He screwed a CPU fan into a pair of underwear. Briefs with a built in fart fan.

14. Free programming for my blog!

That’s the giant inflatable gorilla David put in front of my house on Valentine’s Day in 2003.

I love being married. Marriage is a blessing from God. However, not everyone is married, and there are some advantages to being single.

Fourteen Reasons Why It’s Great to be a Single Woman

1. You don’t have to watch Future Weapons unless you want to.

2. You don’t have to go to Circuit City or Fry’s for hours just to look around.

3. No one will steal your Diet Coke!

4. You won’t argue over Chinese or Italian for dinner.

5. You have more time to devote to missions, charity and church.

6. You don’t have to buy anyone anything for Valentine’s Day.

7. You don’t have to figure out what to buy the guy who has everything for Christmas or his birthday. (Are you sensing I have a problem with gifts for my husband?)

8. You can get a cat or a dog and give it the girlyest name ever.

9. You only have one schedule to check when you get invited to girls night or a book club.

10. No cooking or cleaning up after guys’ night.

11. Have you smelled a hairy man after he smokes a cigar?

12. The toilet seat is always down.

13. You don’t have to teach someone why wet towels do not go on the bed.

14. Your taxes are easier. You don’t have to ask “Where’s your W-2?” or “Did you enter our medical expenses in Turbo Tax?”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Love,

A Young Wife

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Christmas 2009 was great! We felt so relaxed and unhurried. There were fewer gifts this year, and more family time. It felt like we could read the Christmas story in Luke and John 1 without making anyone late for another event.

Christmas Eve morning, David and I slept in. I made smoothies for breakfast, and we had just settled on the couch to drink them and watch a Christmas movie when my mother called. The weather man was reporting that Dallas would have whiteout conditions by noon, and we needed to head to the suburb where both my parents and in-laws live so we wouldn’t have to drive on the freeway once the storm hit. David and I threw our clothes (some of mine dirty) in a suitcase, as well as all of our stuff to bake cookies, and two dogs since we were dog sitting for our friends. Okay, so the rushing Christmas Eve to beat the storm wasn’t relaxing, but everything else was.

We made it safely to our parents’ side of town, although it did start icing/snowing as we drove. Yes, we had a white Christmas! No, I didn’t get any pictures. It was pretty cold outside, and the dogs didn’t really want to stay out any longer than they had to.

Once we made it to my parents’ house, David and I made our gingerbread cookies. We hung out there until it was time to go to David’s parents’ house. We had such a good time watching our nieces and nephews open their gifts. We gave our nieces a dress up box with feather boas, high heels, a purse, a feathered fan, etc. They LOVED it! Everyone liked the crepe paper money roll. We gave my three year old nephew Thomas the Train squirt toys and he was delighted.

It was a fun evening with great food and board games. David was hurting considerably because of the cold and all the rushing around earlier that day. His mother gave him a really neat heating pad that conforms to your neck and shoulders. We spent the night there, and got to watch our nephews open presents from Santa Christmas morning.

Christmas Day we spent with my parents. There were so many funny gifts. Well, maybe it wasn’t the gifts that were funny. Maybe it was just seeing Brother #2 in basketball shorts and his new cowboy boots. And playing Word Party with my family is always hilarious. You really get to see how differently we all think. I learned something interesting. When I say, “SNL” it sounds like “S&L” to my parents, and instead of thinking “Tina Fey” they think “Savings and Loan”.

That afternoon we had a traditional Tex-Mex Christmas dinner of queso, guacamole and taco soup. By then it had warmed up and the roads had cleared so we were able to go home. David gave me a bookshelf from Ikea for Christmas. He and a friend opened the box Saturday to put it together and discovered it was the wrong color. So, my brave husband went to Ikea and made a return the day after Christmas! They put the shelf together, and now I’m trying to find all the books I hid when we staged the house while it was on the market.

How was your Christmas? What are your plans for New Year’s? David and I typically have a New Year’s Day brunch, but with me working extra hours at my part-time job, David’s arthritis and his job search, we are skipping it this year.

Love,
A Young Wife

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Mom, don’t read this post.

It will spoil your Christmas.

I’m warning you.

If you are my mother, you’d better not be reading this.

Okay, so I’m doing the 12 Days of Christmas for my mother this year. She’ll open a present every day beginning December 14 so that she will open the last present on December 25.

I love this idea for Snuggle. Isn’t that a cute, practical gift? I wish I’d seen it earlier. I only need one more gift.

Mom wants eye primer. You know, the stuff that keeps your eyeshadow from creasing? Does anyone have a good (cheap) eye primer they could recommend?

Here’s what I’ve got.

Hand warmers (My mother is always cold!), mascara, hand scrub, a nail buffer…

And these “Swanky Hankies”. Aren’t they cute?

This one’s a family joke. My mother does not like salmon, but for years a relative gave her cans of salmon for Christmas. I’m not really sure why.

Are you finished with your Christmas shopping?

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