Happy Birthday, Best Friend!

I've been really bad about wishing the important people in my life a happy birthday in this second year of my blog. Today, however, is the birthday of the most important person on earth to me, so I most definitely can't overlook this very significant day. Thirty-six years ago today, my beloved husband was born in our childhood hometown of Salina, Kansas. About 12 ½ years later we had 7th grade English, Math and Social Studies together. About 8 years after that, I realized I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. Lucky for me, he happened to feel the same way! :)

It’s no secret that I think Chad is pretty wicked awesome. If you’ve read my blog before, you probably already know almost everything about him. One thing you might actually not know is that he is currently training for the Lawrence Half Marathon, and this morning he got up and ran 7 miles with our friend Jake. I'm very impressed with his dedication, especially since most people like to take it easy on their birthday!

Speaking of Jake, our friends Jake and Amber sent the most hilarious birthday card to Chad that I just have to share. I just took a picture of it since our scanner isn't hooked up, so hopefully you can see it okay:


How funny is that? We just couldn't stop laughing. Maybe it won't be so funny to people who aren't familiar with our rather unappealing state capital.

Anyway, I'm kind of a lame wife, so I didn't really plan anything super exciting (or even kind of exciting) for Chad's birthday today. Thankfully, we had two different friends who offered us KU/Colorado basketball tickets today (thanks Grant & Heather and thanks Dan), so not only were Chad and I able to go to the game, but we were each able to bring a friend as well! It was great to see the Jayhawks win, although the game really wasn't that exciting. The crowd was a little bit subdued, primarily because there were about half as many students in attendance as there are normally. It was the 11oth anniversary of basketball at KU, so bunches of players from decades past were sitting in the normal student section, and needless to say they weren't nearly as noisy as a bunch of young adults! It was fun to see lots of our former favorites, as well as the team from the '88 National Championship team.

Despite the fact that Allen Fieldhouse was a little lacking in spirit, I still really enjoyed one of my favorite parts of being there--seeing the player intros just before the game. If you've been to a game at Allen you'll know what I mean. If not, you might be able to get just a faint idea of what it's like by watching the video I took today. It's not anything like being there, but maybe you can see why Allen Fieldhouse is one of the best college basketball arenas in the country!

The other pictures I took today were kind of entertaining too, mainly because the players and spirit squad were all dressed in throwback uniforms. The cheerleaders' skirts were seriously unflattering and went down to their knees. Check these suckers out!


So besides going to the game today, the only other thing we did to celebrate Chad's birthday was order his new bike and go out to dinner at a new restaurant downtown. Since Chad is more of a hamburger guy than a steak guy, he wanted to check out this new place on Mass called Joe Shmo's. It's kind of clever idea--it's a bar and grill that has a bocce pit upstairs instead of like darts or shuffleboard or something. My turkey burger was really good and my sweet potato fries were awesome. Chad thought his burger was a little bland, but we agreed that the place was definitely worth going back to.

So that was Chad's birthday in a nutshell, I guess. While not the most exciting birthday ever, at least it was a little better than last year! Happy birthday, best friend! :)