Our Very Own Gift of the Magi

I love marriage. I love those little moments when you realize how blessed your life is and how amazing everything is when you get to spend forever with your best friend. Just such a moment happened the Friday before Mark's birthday. I wanted Mark's birthday to be fun and relaxing for him. I also knew that our house desperately needed to be cleaned. As probably most of you can attest, cleaning the house becomes a weekend chore when everyone is busy with work and school. And let's just say that we hadn't cleaned for at least two weeks before this... sad to admit. When I got home from work on Friday, I had a few more hours before Mark would be back from his afternoon class. I put things into high gear and went crazy on the house, trying to get everything taken care of before Mark got back so we could just relax and play over the weekend. I swept up the kitchen and felt a little surprised that I swept up only so much grossness. I had thought it would be worse. Awesome, maybe we aren't so messy after all. Feeling better about ourselves, I continued mopping and dusting and cleaning counters and all that jazz. Then I vacuumed, sure that I would pull up an enormous amount of more grossness. To my surprise, it actually turned out to be a fairly light vacuuming day. So weird and so awesome. I quickly put the house back together and eagerly awaited Mark's return. When he came home, I was so excited to show him what I had done for him (never having been good at keeping presents or nice things secret). I told him everything that I had done, to which he just gave me a small smile and said "so you really swept and vacuumed today?" Being a bit surprised by this response, I was quick to answer in the affirmative. At that point, Mark told me that he had already swept, mopped, and vacuumed the apartment earlier that morning before his class. Even right before his birthday! I'm so grateful for him! We both ended up laughing when we realized how "gift of the Magi" that moment was.

While I think this story is sweet, I do realize how sad the state of our apartment must have been to still have things to vacuum and sweep up twice in one day. Vaguely depressing. It usually isn't that bad though, I promise!