Thursday, March 20, 2014

26 Things About a 26 Year Old Babe

Cerise is 26 today. She is such an awesome wife and mother to my children. Below are 26 of the many reasons why I love Cerise.

1.  Cerise stubs her toes on a daily basis.

2.  Cerise still hasn't upgraded her instagram app for the video feature.

3.  Cerise screams like someone just kidnapped our kids when she sees even a small spider. She wasn't a big fan when I hid real looking fake cockroaches around our house after we got married. I'm still surprised that Cerise married me.

Cerise is a babe.
4.  Whenever Cerise watches something scary, she has to follow that up with How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

5.  Cerise laughs really loud during the most inappropriate parts in movies that you're not supposed to laugh at. The more she's supposed to control her laughter, the less likely it is that she will be able to control it.

6.  When Cerise says, "Honey, we should do the dishes" or "Honey, we should get some more whole milk for Nash at the store"... what she really means is "Honey, do the dishes right now" or "Honey, run and grab some milk for Nash at Albertson's really quick right now".

Standard conversation 5 minutes after she says, "Let's do the dishes":

Cerise: "Honey, I asked you to do the dishes."
Lynn: "Sorry babe, I didn't realize you asked me. I just heard you say 'Let's do the dishes.'"
Cerise:  "Haven't you figured out in 5 years of marriage that when I say 'Let's do the dishes' that it actually means... 'Do the dishes!'?"

7.  Cerise plans her packing by drawing out her outfits on paper before long trips.

Cerise's planned outfits for our Europe trip last year. She doesn't know I took a picture of this.

8.  Cerise will choose to not listen to a secret if you tell her she probably shouldn't hear it.
You know when people say, "Oh man, I have the craziest secret... but I probably shouldn't tell you..." Cerise will answer that with, "That's fine, if I don't need to know, don't tell me." I'm not making this up.

9.  Cerise is a scrappy, entrepreneurial lady.
She graduated BYU in just 3 years by getting college credits in high school, taking classes in spring and summer, and getting a quick, practical degree (Economics - she graduated with 120.5 credits just over the 120 credit minimum). She worked as a stockbroker right out of BYU and worked weekends by starting up her own little cleaning business. She decided to put flyers on doors at an apartment complex known to house wealthier BYU students (Belmont). So she worked weekdays as a stockbroker and cleaned Belmont apartments on weekends to help support us while I went to school full time and worked part time. She would rather scrub toilets for rich kids her age than potentially take a government handout. After I graduated, she continued to work as a stock broker in Orange County and wanted to take a second job stocking shelves at Wal-Mart while pregnant with Calvin to make a little extra money since I was at work all the time during busy season. I think a lot of wives would complain about the kind of work schedule I had, but she wanted to stock shelves at Wal-Mart while 5-6 months pregnant. I had to work really hard to talk her out of that. After she stopped working to be home with the kids full time, she started teaching swim lessons. She started with just one student and ended up with 27 students last summer with all of her new students coming from referrals.

10. Cerise is brutally honest.
I was in Japan for work just after Nash had turned one. Cerise told me that Nash had just taken his first steps as he walked closer to the phone. I got really excited since I was on speaker thinking that Nash had taken his first steps since he wanted to be closer to my voice. So when I asked, "Honey, is Nash trying to walk to the phone because he wants to talk to me??" She replied with zero hesitation, "Nope, he just wants to play with the phone." She's not even kidding nor is she trying to be mean. She was just telling it like it is.

11. Cerise watched a Youtube video on how to properly fold men's suits. Now she folds my suits nicely for me when I go on trips.

12.  Cerise is good at drawing fake muscles.
Cerise ran into the bathroom, came back with some kind of makeup item, and within 40 seconds of Calvin wiggling the whole time gave him real looking muscles.



13. When I ask Cerise if there is anything she wants me to work on as a husband she usually thinks for a minute and says something like, "Honey, you're a really good husband. I can't think of anything right now." When she gets really mad at me though, the floodgates open. A few months ago she got really mad at me for leaving the little caps of my LASIK eye drops on the counter (the preservative free eye drop capsules with the lids that pop on and off - if you've had LASIK then you know what I'm talking about). Calvin would knock them off the counter and then Nash would find them and put them in his mouth. She got really mad and made a list of 33 things that drive her crazy about me. I laughed the entire time she was furiously creating the list because they were all true. Her list and the way she posted it reminded me of Martin Luther and his 95 Theses.

14.  Cerise laughs really loud while watching TV shows by herself.

15. Cerise is not a phone talker. I have to make up crazy stories or swear to get her to stay on the phone for more than 2 minutes. In her defense, she's a lot better with Skype.



16.  Cerise gets really mad when I get rid of any of her multiple tabs saving her spots for her asian drama shows.

17.  Cerise isn't afraid to call people out on stuff.

18.  Cerise has four younger sisters. She loves to boss them around. She also has three brothers that she likes to boss around.

From left to right: Lydia, Sariah, Ferree, Elisabeth, Cerise (bossiest)

19. Cerise likes really bad action movies.

20.  Cerise could have been driving a Porsche Cayenne right now.
Cerise had knee surgery a few months after Calvin was born to fix her torn ACL. The anesthesiologist anesthetized the wrong knee so she woke up (they put her under general anesthesia during the surgery) in severe pain with her operated knee and her other knee completely numb. The anesthesiologist quickly figured out her mistake and avoided documenting that she had performed a femoral nerve block. The nurses after the surgery treated Cerise her like she was a total wimp because she wasn't able to stand on her "good" leg. They didn't see anything on her chart by the anesthesiologist. Her surgery was supposed to be an out-patient surgery, but we had to stay in the hospital overnight until the femoral nerve block had completely worn off on her good knee. They don't allow you to leave until you can support yourself on crutches using your non-operated leg. Many of our friends and acquaintances have told us that we could have sued for a significant amount of money since they numbed the wrong leg and then tried to cover it up. They then tried to bill our insurance for absurd amounts of money for our overnight stay in the hospital. We kindly pointed out that the only reason we stayed overnight for an outpatient surgery was because of their mistake which they tried to cover up. I left it up to Cerise and she decided not to sue because that anesthesiologist most likely would have lost her license. Cerise doesn't believe that people should sue just because they can sue.

21.  Cerise has a pretty solid right hook. Whenever I call her out on something funny that she feels embarrassed about, she gives me a bunch of dead arms. She starts hitting harder because I laugh harder each time she punches my arm.

22.  Cerise defends people from gossip even if she doesn't like the person she is defending.

23.  Cerise does her best to respect and preserve her Japanese heritage.

Cerise playing dress up with her gramma.

24.  Cerise is really good at magnifying her callings. She heart attacks less active girls in the primary class we teach and mails birthday cards to the kids. For our mock MTC activity, Cerise went crazy with it and made high quality name badges, sent exact replicas of the mission calls, and contacted all of the parents. We ate pizza, had them teach fake investigators (friends in our ward), learn basic Spanish phrases, and had them call my older brother who was pretending to be Mexican.

Putting flour on our heads to look old was totally worth the $20 dry cleaning. This was Cerise's idea as we were walking out of the house.


25. Cerise loves hanging out in her swimsuit all day, but tries to make it seem like it hasn't been all day. This is a typical exchange during the summer when I get home from work at like 7 p.m.:

Me: "Honey, have you been in your swimsuit all day?"
Cerise: "Nah, I just went and swam laps a bit ago."
Me: "Didn't you go swim laps at like 9 a.m. while Becky watched the kids for a bit?"


26.  Cerise is an amazing wife and mom.