4 posts tagged “me”
I am 33 today! Birthdays are a little different now. When I was (much) younger birthdays used to be all encompassing. I was pretty much always on holiday around birthday time because school had closed for the year so the day started with birthday prezzies and the rest of the day was playing with them, trying them out.
Now as a grown-up birthdays are often caught up in the day to day stuff. Feeding dogs, changing nappies (diapers for my American readers) and so on. One thing I don't do on my birthday anymore is work (at least not a full day - I have a meeting today I have to attend). The last time I did that I was working part-time at a local stationery/book store/music store and it was an awful way to spend a birthday. Since then I have either taken leave or, since starting my own business, just taken the day off.
The one thing I don't want to do is see my birthday as "yet another day". Birthdays are special even if they tend to come around again and again. They are the anniversaries of our entry into this world and given our uniqueness, they should be treasured days.
Anyway, I apparently have a flat tyre which I need to go and change ... :-P
Gina took this with her snazzy new phone.
It is Tuesday morning and we are back home from a really great weekend away. Our marriage is a year old already and it is hard to believe the time has gone by so quickly. Last night as we were turning out the light Gina commented that by that time last year we had been asleep for 5 hours already (we were so exhausted after the wedding that we were falling asleep at the hotel we spent the night at afterwards).
Our weekend away was at the Drakensberg Sun Resort where we spent our honeymoon. We didn't quite have the same room but it was a really nice one nevertheless. The meals are fantastic although I admit that if you are there for a long period of time, they do become a little too familiar. We were at the resort for about 10 days for our honeymoon so the novelty quickly wore off.
This time around I think I was still carrying some of the weight I picked up from the last time so I had to force myself to take it a little easy with all the food! This was not easy when they rolled out apple crumble and custard. They also had this terrible habit of making amazing desserts. On the whole I think I did ok with all the food. Besides, we had to make the most of the food, it breakfast and dinner were included in the room rate ... ;-)
Once again we managed to take a lot of photos. Some of the photos are in my Vox library and the full collection is on Flickr. Gina shot many of the photos on this trip. I drove and she shot photos of the scenery we passed.
On the whole we had a great time. I don't think we have spent as much quality time together as we did on the trip for a long time. I didn't have my laptop with me so that wasn't a distraction. We just spent some good time together as we should when we go on holiday.
Yesterday I mentioned that there was something in my life to be very happy about and this is it. After a mere 15 months or so together, Gina and I are engaged to be married early next year. We are both very excited about this and I am thrilled to have such a beautiful and loving woman as my fiancee and look forward to her becoming my wife. I wrote the following before I gave her the ring (more on both of these two items below):
May I be a loving husband;
May I be a loyal friend;
May I be a gentle lover;
May I love her well.
In this ever changing world, are there greater gifts a man can give to his wife? Ok, I am sure that many of you are interested in how I proposed to Gina yesterday afternoon. Firstly, it was not a surprise to her that we are going to marry, we had been speaking about it for a little while now. We went to pick out the ring last at a great jeweller's shop called Sidersky Jewellers. We were told that our jeweller would have the ring ready within 10 working days and if we were nice to him he would have it ready by this Saturday. A couple days ago he informed me that the ring would be ready on Wednesday or Thursday. I was able to pick up the ring on Thursday afternoon (yesterday). I picked a very nice bunch of flowers on the way home and started to set everything up for Gina before she arrived home:
- I set my DVD player to play a cover of Cindy Lauper's "Time After Time", one of G's favourite songs;
- I left a note on the floor by the front door instructing her to put everything down there and to go to the coffee table in the lounge;
- Another note on the coffee table instructed Gina to press 'play' and to open a card I left for her;
- I was waiting in the next room and when I heard the music playing I came into the room and kissed her;
- As she was reading the card, I gave her the ring.
I still have something up my sleeve and won't tell you about that now for obvious reasons. We are both very very excited and I still don't think this has really sunk in just yet. For those looking for a picture of her very beautiful ring, I created a collage with Picasa2:
