Life with the Obies: My Husband

Once upon a time, back in 2007, Nicholas and I went on our first real date.

I say 'real' because we had hung out a few times previously, but it was always with a group of friends. Then he returned to power school in South Carolina and our {unofficial} relationship consisted of just phone calls. Such a glamourous long distance, military relationship life we lead.

In April 2007, Nicholas took leave and returned home to Missouri. He drove up to Mizzou and that night, we had our first real date. It was your cliche 'dinner and a movie' date. We started at Applebee's for dinner and then headed to the theater to see TMNT. Yes, that is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I have no shame in admitting I love the turtles and was dying to see this movie. As a boy, Nick was not opposed to the idea either. And we loved it!!!

Fast forward seven years and five months....

When the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies hit the theaters a few weeks ago, we decided it'd be a cute idea to recreate our first date.

Friday night, we headed out to Applebee's. Back then, we just talked about our lives, which were separate and now starting to blend; more 'getting to know you' talk. This date consisted of reminiscing about those days which transitioned into talking about visions of our future.

While at dinner, talking about how crazy it is that this date happened over seven years ago, it was then that I realized we were truly reliving this first date weekend.
You see, April 6, 2007, we went on our first date to Applebee's and to see TMNT (and we became "official" that night after the date.)
And the next day, the reason Nick came in town, we attended a wedding. Which was the exact same thing we would be doing the following day!!!!! We had been trying to see this movie for a few weeks and things kept getting in the way. It's pretty ironic that the day we made it happen, was the day before a wedding.

So we were truly reliving the first date weekend; the first date as an unofficial couple, and the first official date!!!!

As you might have seen on Instagram, I was poking fun at my husband. You see these four shirts below? Well, the first two are brand new. He bought them last night before dinner (along with a new tie and three-piece suit). And the back two are two he already owns. Ummm....they're almost identical! Sure, they're different, but just barely!!! But clearly to my metrosexual husband, they are "significantly different" and he needed these two new ones. {insert eye roll}

So while I love to give him trouble about how long it takes him to pick out clothes, or complain because he has far more clothes than I do, loves fashion and shopping, and drives me nuts sometimes, I'd be lying if I said I didn't love it.
After he got dressed, I was feeling pretty lucky to be bringing such a dashing man as my date to my volunteers' wedding that afternoon.

I always have and always will be attracted to metrosexual men. I just love a man who is well groomed, does his hair, loves to dress nicely, and looks damn good while doing it! I mean, look at him!

So dapper! And he even cooperated and let me take many, many photos of him.

{Y'all, I'm not even sorry I'm bombarding you with photos of him. This is my blog and I love looking back on posts after months and years. And I know I'll love looking back at this handsome husband of mine.}

I mean, clearly I'm biased since he's my husband, but he's not hard on the eyes so hopefully this isn't too painful for you to look at him ;)

(Sadly the sleeves became wrinkled by the time I had the idea for him to take off his jacket).

And it just seems appropriate that today I participate in my first ever #ManCrushMonday. I've never done it. Mainly because my husband is my crush, but that's cheesy and lame to post. However, I'm here today to be lame and cheesy and declare this man as my #ManCrushMonday...today and everyday.

Okay, so enough of that. We hopped in the car and headed to the wedding. Of course, I wanted to snap some more photos. They were going to be just for myself but then he decided to be an ass and stick his tongue out and act like an angry elf, then declare "Don't post those anywhere". So naturally I had to post them.

Then it was wedding time! We were lucky enough to score seats in the shade (although we still sweat half our body weight away). Thankfully the ceremony was short and then we got to move inside to some air conditioning.

The reception ended early in the evening so we decided to carry out the date by heading to a wine bar and enjoying an evening on the patio.

We still weren't ready to call it a night so we headed to Jax Beach and grabbed a late dinner on a beachside patio. It was an amazing evening! The breeze coming off the ocean was perfect. Afterwards we headed down the street and met up with some of my co-workers until we finally thought it might be good to head home and be good dog parents and stop neglecting the dogs.

It was such a perfect evening. My husband truly is my best friend so add that in with getting the opportunity to dress up and have a nice evening out; it was the perfect recipe. Work has been getting back into the long work weeks of crazy stressfulness for me and this next week is going to be long and rough for Nick as well. It was a much needed date and it was nice to bring some sentimentality to it by recreating our first date.

For fun, here's a photo from then, and now!

How did you spend your Labor Day Weekend?
Have you ever recreated a first date or an older moment or event??

Nicholas and I celebrated our anniversary a month ago and I've yet to share our anniversary photo with everyone! Each year, we take a photo with the photo from the year before (thanks Pinterest!). It's a tradition we love and although I don't see any changes in our appearances, I'm sure we'll see some in a few years.

Choosing a location is always something we probably spend far too much time discussing. Last year, we chose to take the photo on base, with the helicopter Nick was trainng on in the background. That helicopter was a symbol of the reason we were in Milton, Florida, where we spent our second year of marriage.

This year was actually a pretty easy location decision. We purchased our very first home in our third year of marriage, something we're incredibly proud of, so it only made sense to take a photo in front of it. Sadly, it was hard to do, even with a tripod. We had to stand in the street to get a closer up shot of us, with the house smaller in the background to get it in the photo. The main problem is the incline of the street had us standing up a little higher than we'd have liked to get a shot of the house. But it is what it is. We might try to retake the photo, if we feel like it....which we probably won't. Here are the only decent shots we got from the 10 we took:
(The house has been distorted and uglified (made up word) simply because I don't need internet stalkers being able to find me and kill me. Our house is pretty cookie cutter so this should be good enough to not give anyone super obvious knowledge of where we live.)