Surprise Birthday Cabinet

 The other day I went to an appointment, and when I came home, Tige & Abby were asleep in my bed, and Taylor was asleep like this on the stairs.  Oops.

And here is my awesome surprise (early) birthday present from Tige!  Best present ever!

When we first moved into our house, I told Tige that if I could change anything, I'd add a glass cabinet right here for my fancy china.  But it's not something we've talked about on a regular basis. Well, I guess 2 months ago he's been in cahoots with a cabinet maker to make me this gorgeous addition.  There was all kinds of sneakiness, texts, and emails to match the wood cuts and stain.  Tige hinted that I had a big present in the works, but I had no idea what it was.

So yesterday he calls my cell phone and asks where I'm at.  I tell him I've just left the gym and am on my way to Walmart.  He asks me to come home instead.  When I get home, he tells me to shower and get changed, and then we'll go to Walmart together (should have known something was up as this is unusal), and then that he'd drop me off for a 90 minute massage.  What?  I start arguing with him.  "No, I don't need a massage. We don't need to spend money on a massage, etc."  He is insistant that I've worked hard and I deserve a massage.  (I didn't know he just needed me to get out of the house for a few hours).  He gets exasperated and tells me to quit arguing with him.  I say "you can just give me a massage!"  Anyway, the poor guy finally puts his foot down, and off we go to Walmart & to get a massage.  It was 90 mnutes of pure heaven by the way.  I haven't had a massage in about 4.5 years, so it was fantastic!

After the 90 minutes, he picks me up.  On our way home, he says "your birthday present arrived via UPS so I'm glad I was home.  Then he hands me a little gift to unwrap.  I say, "I don't want to open it now.  I want to wait til my birthday!"  He says, "no, open it now. Can't wait til your birthday."  I say "can we at least wait til we are home?" (he probably wanted to kill me for being so difficult).  He says "no, open it in the car."  So I open it and it's a brown cardboard box that says "Noritake, Landon" on it.  I immediately say "this is my china. Did you get me a china cupboard?"  He had no idea I'd know just from looking at the box that it was my china.  He says, yeah, I made you a cupboard.  I got it from Walmart, and a piece was missing so I had to run back to Walmart while you were gone, and it was really hard to get it put together in only 2 hours."

I'm thinking in my head "crap. Tige had gone to all this effort to "make" me a china cabinet.  But he got it at Walmart.  And he's so excited about it.  And I'm probably going to hate it but I'm going to hae to pretend I love it.  Ugh."  So I walk in the house, and see this beauty with my china already in it.  I burst into tears!  It is SOOO beautiful! I just love to sit and stare at it.  If I could have hand-picked the perfect design, that would be it!  It looks amazing.

I love you Tige.  Thanks for the fabulous birthday surprise.  Sorry I was a pill about leaving the house. :D