The Comic Mummy Turns 1!!!!!!!

Damn, I missed my own birthday! Oh well...it's not like I've had a lack of celebrating round here lately. Take for instance, this weekend just gone. I don't mean to brag, but we had THE MOST FANTASTIC WEEKEND OF OUR ENTIRE LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I'll stop yelling now. But it was JUST SO AMAZ....okay, sorry. I'm seriously done now.

You see, my lovely hubby Tim has recently reached some major milestones, in that:

- he's about to turn 30;
- we're about to have our 5-year wedding anniversary;
- after four years of being a full-time student (with two small kids in tow), he's graduated;
- he's finally getting some regular, well paid teaching work; and thus
- he's feeling like a successful breadwinner.

Not that I buy into that whole 'man must provide for his family' thing, but the fact is that Tim has a spring in his step these days that I haven't seen for ages. If ever. And it's so so wonderful, so to celebrate, I organised a weekend chockers with surprises (having the kids minded by his folks was the first one) including:

- a drive to the Coast and breakfast at the same beach cafe where we had our wedding reception;
- a day and a night at a tropical beach retreat which basically involved lazing by the pool, walking through the fruit orchard and turning ourselves into prunes in the spa;
- an hour-long massage in the middle of the rainforest;
- dinner at a gorgeous Nepalese place in Kingscliff;
- a Ricky Gervais stand-up DVD (and NOOOO, that wasn't just for me, thank you very much! Tim has actually been genuinely getting into his comedy lately. I swear. Especially when I chain him to the chair and threaten him with a spray-can of Ajax.)
- uninterrupted sleep!
- extraordinary home cooked breakfast in that while it was cooked at home, it wasn't cooked by either of us; and
- a day at Wet'n'Wild water park!!!!!

Now, I know this all sounds spoiled rotten, and I'd hate to sound like one of those people who's always like "Ooh, my marriage is just so terrific! We're just hap-hap-happy all the time!"

But the thing is, it's so nice to finally be having a great time in our marriage, because to tell you the complete and honest truth: last year sucked. Oh yeah, it was great from my POV on the career front, but my family life suffered big-time. I won't go into details, but the bottom line is that it was tough, sucked much more than I ever let on in any blog entries (though my nearest and dearest reckon they picked up on it anyway) but that we made a joint decision to just hang in there.

And now that we're finally out of the stress of full-time study and therefore full-time poverty while raising full-time tiny kiddies, and now into the new chapter of having more work, a little more money (while we're still by no means rich, we certainly feel like we are!) and having slightly bigger and thus more independent kiddies, I'm sure glad that we stuck with it.

Just the other day my friend and blog-reader Mezza said to me "Gees, I've noticed there have been a lot of gushy I-love-Tim blog entries lately!"

"Have there?" I said. "I feel like I hardly ever write about him."

"I've definitely noticed!" she said.

Is it really that obvious? Okay, I'll try to tone it down from now on.

Let's hear it for the b-

Okay sorry. Done now.