Holiday Party

Here's another thing I can share with you now that we know that Steve will be staying with his current employer... This year marks his tenth year of employment. The HR director called me a month ago and asked me what Steve would like for his ten-year gift. She gave me a dollar amount and told me it was supposed to be a surprise. Well there's no way I'm going to pick out his ten-year gift without his input so together we decided on a cantered hutch for our dining room made by our friends, the D's. They own a furniture store in a nearby town. We helped them in very little ways when they got started several years ago as friends are wont to do. Ed has said that he'd like to give us a dining room set as a thank you but Steve and I were never really very comfortable accepting such a lavish gift. As it turns out when we ordered the cantered hutch, Ed happened to have a return on a table. He is insistent that we accept the table and four chairs (we'll have to order a couple more to fit our family) and he's finishing my cantered hutch to match the table and chairs. So in a round-about way we're getting a whole brand-new dining room set! Now I'm trying to talk Steve into restoring our floors while all the furniture is out. At the very least I've talked him into redecorating the downstairs rooms.

What does all this have to do with the Holiday Party? Well that's when they'll present Steve with his "surprise." It's a fun party with good food and a DJ and I get all dolled up. Unfortunately we didn't know what his employment status was going to be so I did agree to work the weekend of the party but I'm going to see if I can get that night off and if not we'll at least go for the dinner part. He doesn't really like to dance anyway.

I did get a dress today. Steve drove so he could give me his opinion and I took four dresses with me into the dressing room. The first one I tried on was acceptable but not fantastic. The second dress, he wasn't crazy about the stuff at the bottom but when I put on the third and stepped out of the dressing room his eyes lit up. He really liked the third dress and when I said I was going to try on the fourth he said, "Don't bother." It's nice to be able to make your husband's eyes light up like that.