March 29: 7:56-8:27 The Moment I Knew My Husband Had Taken to the Hot Tea Ritual

We’re the world’s biggest YouTubers.

And by YouTubers, I don’t mean the kind that make videos and upload them, exposing every detail of our lives in the process, right down to how we organize our underwear in the drawers of our camper that we sold at the beginning of the month like some adventurers do.

I mean the kind that pretty much every weekday evening are checking for the latest posts from the people we follow. So when my slicing time from 7:56-8:27 rolls around, I’m usually just finishing the Wordle and getting ready to start the latest video from Keep Your Daydream or Turner Max Adventures or Randi’s Adventures. I’ve already watched and rewatched Plant Vibrations With Devin Wallien right when I got home and finished taking the dogs out and watering plants (Devin’s recent Houseplant Tour – 125 is my current favorite, and I’ll watch that one on repeat practically).

Seriously? A favorite word and it took five tries?

We have our fixed routine about it, too, like most other old people. We come in, change into t-shirts and pajama pants, empty our lunchboxes, figure out what’s for dinner, and then one of us will start the teapot for our evening hot tea during this time of the day. We decide together what kind of tea we want, and rarely do we have two different kinds. Usually it’s green tea, but sometimes we go all out and have black tea or white tea. On nights when we really feel like getting wild, we have spiced tea.

I’m always the tea fixer, but either one of us might hit the button to start the electric kettle after we decide which kind to have. That’s important because we need to know whether to hit the button for green tea at that exact temperature, black for that temperature, or white for that temperature. It matters.

My husband empties his lunchbox in the kitchen

Honestly, I wasn’t sure when I switched us over to drinking more green tea whether my husband would buy in, but he has.

Want to know when I knew it for sure? It happened one afternoon when I’d started the evening tea ritual a little earlier than usual because I was feeling chilly. He hadn’t even emptied his lunchbox yet, and already I was stirring the honey in his tea.

I heard him mutter something about meaning to cut something back. He took his tea and disappeared through the garage door. Next thing I knew, I heard the tractor coming from the barn and looked out and saw him coming across the yard – – with his tea! On the tractor!

And that’s when I knew I had a serious tea drinker on my hands.

I laughed so hard. It brought back memories of The Art of Racing in the Rain when that French racecar driver was in a race sipping on his espresso like there was nothing to winning a race. Here was my backwoods country husband still in his work clothes, on his tractor, sipping his evening tea, and here I stood laughing from the living room window and loving him so much because this is the life partner I’ve always wanted to be surrounded by trees with. In a house on a farm on the backside of nowhere where there is so much simple life to count on and celebrate at the end of the day.

Today is our anniversary,

and I’ll tell him

just what I tell him every day: that I love him.

and what I love most is knowing

that at the end of it

we’ll be right here in our chairs

sipping tea together

Living life on the edge!

Cheers!

Slice of Life Challenge – March 29 – Happy Anniversary, Baby! Cheers to 15 Years!

Fifteen years ago today, I married my best friend. I still enjoy thinking back on our wedding day…..looking at our wedding album photos. Here are eleven of my favorite memories from that day that I’ll be sharing with Briar today:

  1. Those were the days I didn’t even own a hairbrush. I dried my hair on the way to the wedding in the wind by holding my head out the window of the car. Right before I went down the aisle, the wedding director told me I needed lipstick. So I put it on for everyone else, but not for me.

2. Both of our mothers dressed in blue and were alive and excited to see us happy, in love, and getting married. They are no longer with us, and we miss them.

3. We asked three ministers to tie the knot extra tight – your childhood pastor, our good friend minister, and my preacher dad. In one of my favorite wedding pictures, The Lord’s Prayer is playing and Dad is standing over us with a hand on each of us, praying for us.

4. The florist didn’t put the wires in the tulips (my favorite flowers), and shortly after the wedding began, they started drooping….and drooped….and drooped……

5. We turned our wedding around. We didn’t want our backs to our guests; we wanted them to feel like they were a part of the ceremony.

6. I’d wanted a simple pair of gold sandals to match the gold in my dress, not flats and not high heels, but I couldn’t find any that I liked. So I found a pair of white sandals I liked, taped the soles and footbeds, and spray painted my wedding shoes gold.

7. I wanted a fresher, more updated version of Canon in D, so I chose Lullaby by Bond as the processional for the entire wedding party including me, because it makes me feel good inside time I hear it. It just rolled on and we all did our best to walk slowly. I remember that everyone’s face lit up with surprised expressions during our recessional, because at the very last minute as I was heading down the aisle at the start of the wedding, I had whispered up to your brother in the sound booth, “I want to change the recessional music. Ditch the Trumpet Voluntary and play the Hallelujah Chorus, will ya?” And so he did.

8. I remember just having the BEST time planning our wedding to be exactly what we wanted it to be – a small gathering of friends and family, with a short and personal service followed by a catered dinner reception. And we spent hours together making our own wedding favors that matched the candles on the tables. We cut giftwrap to go in bands around the candles and added our names and wedding date. And we are still burning these, fifteen years later.

9. You smudged my nose with carrot cake icing. That’s my favorite cake – so we had carrot for me and chocolate for you. Every part of that day was so much fun, but ironically the only bite of cake I got was the bite for the picture. We tried to eat the topper a year later, but after a year in the freezer, the frostbite had set in and it wasn’t tasty anymore.

10. We each served our new mothers-in-law a slice of cake to earn some brownie points on the front end. And it paid off!

11. And right before we left on our honeymoon, we called all of our children, nieces, and nephews up to gather around us. I gave each of them a flower from my bouquet, and then we prayed for them. We also prayed for all of the students in our community attending prom that evening, that they would be safe.

I didn’t think it was possible to love my husband any more than I did on our wedding day, but fifteen years later……I sure do!

My processional music
Our SURPRISE recessional music