Oh no he didn't!

Oh yes he did!

My present arrived yesterday. The one I was guessing. And it's spectafantastiwonderlous!

Dan hasn't been one to surprise me in our marriage. He usually wants to talk and plan things out down to the nitty gritty detail. Of course there are the occasional, well appreciated surprise bouquet of flowers, but anything worth any serious kind of money, is not surprise material. It gets added on to the end of our wishlist which is currently running about 5 years out.

It kind of goes like this-Any item you want gets put on the docket for either your birthday or Christmas. So If you have more than 2 items on your list, it gets bumped over to either your birthday or Christmas for the following year. So say you have 9 items on your wishlist, you can expect to get that last one for Christmas 2013. Items may be moved up and down the list according to priority at your discretion.

I'm only kidding a little. Seriously though, without Dan and his financial plans we would probably not have any money, be paying our school loans into our 90's, and have lots of cool stuff.

But 2 weeks away, calling for minutes at a time, mostly to hear your wife crying or yelling, must inflict a certain amount of guilt, sympathy, and love.

And he told me he got me a present. My heart jumped immediately to one item on my wishlist we'd been "discussing" lately. One that I wanted really really bad even though it wasn't Christmas or my birthday.

He told me the mystery present would arrive in 2 parts. One last week and one this week. I tried my best not to get my hopes up.

Last week I opened a box containing a memory card. Which led me to believe that part number 2 was the camera I wanted.

Back in the day, 1996, I took my first photography class. I liked it so much, despite my pot-smoking, tree-hugging teacher that I took it the next year, and the next, and then there were no more classes, I had done them all. But she obliged and let me do independent study and I pretty much got to make up my own curriculum and spend all my free time in the lab. Now don't be led to believe that I am a great photographer, I just really enjoyed it. And one of the funnest parts was developing and printing my own pictures.

When we got married, I told Dan that someday I wanted to have a dark room in our house. He said, "Okay, sure" and we went on our merry way. Well, times have changed and so have cameras. I don't see a darkroom in my near future, but I had set my sights on the Canon Rebel xsi. No dark room necessary.

The present came yesterday and I was right! Dan was right! Oh mansie, was he right! There's so much to learn and play with!

I busted it open and tried to figure out how it all worked last night when the kids went to bed. That left me 2 subjects to photograph.

This one, especially, was a glamourpuss, as it was the most attention she's probably gotten in a year.





And this one. This one.


He is my favorite subject ever.