Ty's Birthday Surprise

My sweet Ty turned 29 years old on Sunday.  When we first met I knew I always wanted to be around him and have him in my life, but I had no idea where his presence in my life would lead me.  We've walked down the aisle together, walked the halls of the hospital together, driven Carter home together, rushed to labor and delivery, meeting Elise less than 30 minutes after our arrival, all together.  Now we roll around in an SUV with just enough room for an extra person to squeeze in between our 2 car seats.  Life is good.  I love our family of 4 and I love the family of 2 we were when we started this whole adventure.  Every time I hear the lyrics, "Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars," in Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud I feel all warm and fuzzy.  It makes me think back to a walk we took along the river when we were dating and both lived in the same apartment complex.  It was dark and the sky was clear showing lots of twinkling stars.  Somehow we got on the topic of marriage and discussed what we saw for our future.  I remember thinking at the time it was like a fairy tale.  I love where that fairy tale has led us!

I wanted to surprise Ty for his birthday. With 2 little ones our time alone together is so much less than it was with just Carter. We are still getting the whole nighttime routine with 2 down. Ty kept talking about the new Avengers movie that was coming out. I knew it was a movie he really wanted to see in theaters and I wanted to make that happen. I talked to my brothers and they agreed to watch Elise and Carter for us so we could go. I decided on the Friday not a few days before his birthday, but the week before. I went on Fandango and purchased the tickets way in advance and then I excitedly waited. Keeping secrets, especially exciting ones, is hard for me!

My parents had given us a gift card to a restaurant because there was a deal  where you could get more money on the card than you spent. They wanted us all to get to go out to eat together: Jeremy, Thomas, me, Ty, Carter, and Elise (although she wouldn't be eating restaurant food). I decided we should use the gift card to go out before the movie. It was the perfect cover for Jeremy and Thomas to be over and to ensure Ty would come home right after work rather than stopping to run on his way home.

Our waitress was sweet enough to take a picture for us but struggled and then Jeremy didn't lean in far enough and Elise decided she was hungry that very minute.

But look at Carter hamming it up!!!

Thankfully I had Jeremy to help me decide on movie time and theater as I'm used to Ty making our plans! Thomas agreed to switch cars with us after dinner if we needed to head straight to the theater so they'd have the car seats. We were set. Dinner was delicious and it was fun to all be together. We were done with plenty of time to spare so we headed back home. On the way home I decided to spill the beans. I asked Ty what kind of treat he wanted and as he thought about it, I said, "How about an icee?" He loves to get icees when we go to movies and says theaters have the best ones. He started thinking about where to get a good icee and I told him he could get one when we went to see the Avengers movie. He got really excited.

We had time to bathe Carter and put him to bed before we needed to leave for the movie. Since I had gotten tickets on Fandango we had seats reserved and didn't have to worry about getting there early to get good seats. We were both impressed as we walked into the theater and saw giant leather recliners as the seats. We were able to raise our footrests and really lounge during the movie which was awesome. Ty reached over and grabbed my hand and we held hands throughout the entire movie. We walked out into the parking lot to discover it was raining. We laughed as we quickly walked to the car and then enjoyed the chance to talk on our drive home.  I texted Jeremy and Thomas to let them know we were on our way home.  Thomas jokingly responded, "Okay, we'll put Carter to bed."  He always cracks me up.  We talked with them about how it went when we got home.  Elise ended up eating all 4 ounces of milk that I left.  Due to the storm Carter woke up a couple of times so Thomas ended up laying on his floor to help him fall asleep and accidentally fell asleep himself.  I am so grateful to have 2 brothers not only close by but always willing to take care of our sweet babies!

We took a picture by flipping the view but it was too dark.

So I tried holding my phone out and I am not good at doing it that way.  We were both blinded by the flash!

That was the first of 3 birthday celebrations we had for Ty.  I guess he had one celebration for every decade he's been alive with an extra year added to grow on!  We celebrated his birthday with my parents over Mother's Day weekend.  Then we spent his actual birthday weekend and birthday with his family in his hometown.  It was really special to be with his parents on his birthday.  I asked Ty's mom when he was born and she shared some details about his birth story.  I love hearing birth stories so much.  It's amazing to me how our bodies are so amazing and yet so different all at once!