We promised, firstly, to travel. Since the whole having kids thing was not really working out for us, we took advantage of our prosperity and freedom and had some great adventures. We took a wandering road trip through Nashville, where we explored the Grand ol' Opry, Metropolis Illinois, stopping to admire the giant Superman statue and museum, St. Louis, where we went up in the arch and saw the Cards play in their last year at the old Busch Stadium, to Harlan, Iowa for the 4th of July. We spent some real quality time with my folks, then meandered home through Louisville and took a tour of the Louisville Slugger factory (so cool!), a side trip to the middle-of-nowhere Kentucky to visit the Maker's Mark Whisky Distillery (cooler than I can describe), and Atlanta to the Coca-Cola museum, and finally home. We drove to Washington DC and took the Blue Ridge Skyway home (beautiful). We went to NYC and saw 3 Broadway shows and took in a game at the old Yankee stadium. We took countless beach day and weekend trips. Not to mention 2 pilgrimages to the Sponge-O-Rama museum in Tarpon Springs, which deserves its own blog entry, if not its own website. We kept our promise. We travelled.
We bought a PS3 and iPhones. Those were not exactly a promise, except I think that Dearest promised me that when the 3G iPhone came out he was getting one no matter what I said, which is kind of a promise.
We promised to build ourselves a house that we loved with our own pool and hot tub. We did, and even though sometimes it is a lot to maintain and it seemed really big and empty this past year, I am glad we built it and I can't imagine squeezing 2 babies into our old little house.
We promised never EVER EVER to go to the West Oaks Mall (aka the mall that time forgot) to see a movie again. The first time we promised this was when we noticed that they had put up big "No Weapons" signs featuring a picture of a handgun with the red circle/slash on the windows of the box office. NOT a good sign. Then we broke our promise, and had to sit through WallE with this... lovely... woman... on the phone next to us: "I'm watchin' WallE. It stupid. Naw, these two robots, they in lub an shit. Whatchu doin? Aw, yeah, I think I'll go to the club later. Nothin, just chillin. Aahight, I'll get wichu later." Then when she was done talking she handed the phone to her toddler who proceeded to wave the lit-up phone all over like she was at a rave. And it was really distracting. And Dearest wanted to tell her to shove it, but he was a little concerned about who might have been on the other end of the phone that she was meeting at the club later. Since we had forgotten our bullet proof vests this particular evening, he decided to let it slide.
Our final promise was to never again purchase furniture we had to assemble ourselves. We promised this to each other after we spent a solid week putting together 4 huge, beautiful bookcases for the loft, and we nearly killed each other. It was hell on earth. When it came time to pick out dining room furniture, we went so far as to ask "This is going to come completely put together, right? We will not be asked to do any assembly, correct?" And this was a very good promise indeed.
So WHY dear GOD did we just spend our whole weekend assembling two dressers and two cribs that came in SO MANY TINY PIECES??? WHY did we break our promise? I guess we are out of that "money is no longer an object" mindset and into the "how the hell are we going to survive on one income with 2 children???" mindset. So when we saw the sale Penneys was having on their baby furniture, and we could get a discount and free shipping on top of that, we just forgot about our promise. It was such a good deal, we surely would be happy to put it together because, well, it was a good deal! So put it together we did. We congratulated each other when we were done on not ripping each others' heads off. I don't think we ever once even spoke sharply to each other, even when we could not figure out how to get the drop-side onto crib number one or when we had to take the second dresser halfway apart because we put a piece in upside down because the directions were laughably vague. We held it together, like a real team, and I am proud of us.
But we are NEVER EVER buying furniture we have to assemble again.
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