My Husband's Candy Obsession

Do you remember when I shared with you how much my husband loooooves candy?  He's the president of his very own candy club and he loves to find others who share the same love, passion and knowledge that he has for candy.  Not only does he LOVE candy, but he also loves to save a dollar here, there and everywhere.  While I call his habits borderline cheap, he likes to refer to himself as "thrifty".  Sure, we'll go with that for now.  With his love for candy and his spend-thrift ways, Stephen prides himself in visiting any and every drug store, retail and grocery store after holidays to get a deal on candy.  In fact, before Valentines day, he went through his candy stash, carefully organizing it and taking inventory.  The kid had to figure out what he already had and what he "needed".  He was armed and ready for the after Valentines Day sales after that.

The worst time for my husband and his thrifty-candy ways is right now.  We're in the very beginning of the "Candy Drought" as he sorrowfully calls it.  You see, the Candy Drought is the time after Easter and until Halloween - the time where there is no major candy holiday.  With my husband's sweet tooth having a special addiction to Peeps (and all marshmallow candy), you can understand why he is full of candy-sadness during this time when there are no Peeps peeping their way onto the grocery store shelves.  Before you go feeling all sorry for him, please know that he does all that he can to make sure that his personal candy addiction is well tended to.  He made his way to Target after work one day and picked up a few "essentials".  We then headed to another Target and he pridefully scored many bags of Easter marshmallow (what everyone needs) bags for 10 cents a pop.  This past weekend I was in Walgreens and I went to the candy aisle (he's trained me well) thinking that surely all of their Easter candy must be gone.  Boy, oh boy, I was wrong!  I hit the Peep stash and I was so excited to bring home my sugary-Sugar (did you get that?) some Peeps.  Check out the treasures that I got:

I believe there were 5 packages of the pink peeps, 3 of the orange, 2 of the green and 1 of the yellow - and some soft marshmallow suckers and chocolate covered marshmallow eggs for good measure.

That's right, and I scored all of this for $4.50....

I think I saw tears in his eyes when I presented him with this gift of love!

What about you?  Does your husband have any quirky ways (you're super duper lying if you say, "No"!)?

Candy Galore!

Welcome to the PEEP show!  :)  This picture always cracks me up!  

I have never been the one to crave candy, in fact, I've always been quite the opposite.  At any time during the day I could easily eat something salty that is equally (if not more) unhealthy for me than something sugary.  Cheese fries, nachos, pizza, french fries - I have more of a chance of having high cholesterol instead of high blood sugar.  This is NOT the case with my husband.

My husband, if left to his own devices, would devour any piece of sugar that he could get his sticky little hands on.  Cookies?  Cakes?  Pies?  Candy?  Those are the keys to his 8-year-old heart.  Not only does he have an uncanny love for sugary sweets, but he also is the president of his very own candy club.  He has designated candy into 3 main "families": Chocolate, Fruity and Marshmallow.  Now, according to him, there are other branches that come out of these three main "families" which happen to be Marshmallow: candy corn, peeps, circus peanuts, tootsie rolls (no, they're not chocolate, I asked him myself....they're a hybrid, a crossover if you will) and obviously anything else of marshmallow substance.  

Chocolate: candy bars, chocolate candies, m&ms...you know.

Fruity: Skittles, starbursts, fruit slices (his fav from this "family") and then we could break it down even further with hard fruit candies and soft fruit candies. 

Now if you know my husband, you aren't a bit surprised by this at all.  This is the kid who used to keep little bags of various candies in his pockets so that at any time, he was ready to soothe the day with a gram (or 100) of sugar.  This is the kid who, when he was five, went knocking door to door on the cul-de-sac in his neighborhood asking his neighbors for candy because, supposedly, his mom didn't feed him.  True story.

You'd think that the 27 year-old man that I call my husband would be more grown up...not when it comes to his candy.  After every major candy holiday we head to every retail and grocery store we can think of (Krogers, Wal-mart, Target, Walgreens, YOU NAME IT) to see how cheap we can stock up on our candy.  I'm not kidding.  After Halloween, we went to Target and purchased 11 bags of candy corn. ELEVEN.  Easter is an especially joyous candy holiday because he has come off of a candy fast (for Lent) AND because "there's a drought of candy holidays between Easter and Halloween....WE HAVE TO STOCK UP!"  I wish I could say that the twin bed in the front room wasn't covered with bags of Easter candy that we got on sale at a couple of different stores.  I wish I could say that the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet in the office wasn't filled (and I mean filled) with candy which will hopefully last us 'til Halloween.  I really wish I could say that my husband's first response to me possibly getting a research assistantship that could pay for my gradschool (you heard me right) wasn't, "I should've bought more candy that was on sale!"

Oh what will we do when a miniature version of him comes along?!

Home Sweet Home???

Well, it happened before I really knew it was happening.  I know, I know - I have been subconsciously preparing to move to Chicago probably since my engagement in May, 2008...but when did it actually happen?!  I would like that question answered because before I knew it, I was waking up in a different room, in a different building, in a different city, in a different state!  Hold the phone...what?!

I feel like the past month and a half has all been such a blur as my life has changed, somewhat drastically from what it was before.  In less than a year I went from being engaged to being married, from living in Lexington to living in Louisville and THEN to Chicago, from being a teacher to being unemployed (and soon to be student), from living with my best friend to living with a boy (who's also my best friend, but still a boy), from leading Young Life to not, from living in an amazing community full of friends that I loved as family to living in a city (population 3 million in the city and 9.5 million in "Chicagoland") where I think I may know a total of 10 people.  I think I bit off more than I can chew.

Is there a rewind button???  No???  I'll settle for a pause button.  I feel like my life has been in fast forward and although it's finally slowing down, I wish it would've slowed down about 10 months ago so that I could have savored the precious moments that I had with sweet friends in my beloved Lexington.  I was so excited about getting married and all that that would entail that I allowed for important moments of the past months to fly by without me even realizing they were gone...until now.  Sounds like a pity party, right?  Want to join me?  I'll send 'ya an invitation!  DON'T!  Because I shouldn't be pitying around.

I need to remember that this is all part of God's bigger plan for my life.  HE knows why I'm here and why I'm no longer where I love.  HE sees the bigger picture...heck!  He painted the bigger picture!  Why am I so torn up about leaving a place where I was so comfortable to come to a place where I was called?  I shouldn't be!  It's okay that I love where I used to live and that I LOOOOOOVE all my beloveds there - but just because I moved DOESN'T mean that I lost my loves!  Now they get to come and visit my new place of residency (despite knowing that I was called here, I'm not ready to call this "home") and I get to visit them whenever I feel the itch to do so!  So instead of this being a boohoo session, I'm turning it into a "Welcome to Chicago" blog for all my dearly loved friends who are going to come and visit me!

Reason #1 why you should come and visit me:

I live within a 5 minute walk of the Lincoln Park Conservatory.  I know you're thinking, "I don't really care about Conservatorys..."  Well SHUT-IT!  Have you ever actually been in one?  I didn't think so....

Reason #2 why you should visit me:

 

I live within a 6 minute walk from the Lincoln Park Zoo.  I know that that is enticing to all of you!  If you come anywhere between now and Christmas, you can enjoy "ZOO Lights" which is a light exhibit set up throughout the entire zoo :).

Reason #3 of why you should come and visit me:

 

That my friends is a far off picture of my new church... The Moody Church.  While it isn't Southland, it is Biblically based with a pretty passionate pastor (Dr. Erwin Lutzer...look him up, he's got a few books about Jesus under his belt)

Reason #4 why you shouldn't wait to come and visit me:

 

Maybe, if you're lucky, Stephen will give you some of his 5 lbs (that's right, 5 lbs - that's the equivalent of 1400 Gummy Bears!!!) Gummy Bear that his co-worker got him as a belated wedding present...

Hmmm...I gotta be honest, I don't think he'll let you eat his "baby"...

And the last reason why you should come and visit me:

I just may give you some of my winnings from Publishers Clearing House...

DON'T WAIT!  COME TODAY!!! :)