A belated happy birthday post for Ben.

In all my busyness over the weekend, I neglected my dear man's birthday post, and that just won't do. After all, he cleans my ceiling fans and there's no quicker way to my heart than to clean up the grime left behind by heating the house with wood. He's a keeper, for sure.

He is a cutter of huge trees. This just impresses the daylights out of me. Years ago he was getting ready to cut down a dead pine tree in our backyard when I asked him, "What if it falls the wrong way?" He said, "It won't." I further questioned, "How do you know?" to which he replied, "Where do you want it to fall?"

I looked around and said, "Right across that chunk of pampas grass," pointing to it.

He proceeded to cut the tree and lay it right down the middle of the pampas grass, which I never liked anyway. I never questioned again.

Not only does he deep-fry the turkeys at Thanksgiving, he carves them beautifully. It's like watching a surgeon.

AND he does the dishes.

We already know he cleans the ceiling fans, and like I said before, if you want to make the wife happy (and keep from having broken fan blades), clean the ceiling fans.

He fixes my van. I bought this van 11 years ago when Ben was in Bahrain on active duty. It now has 258,000 miles on it and still runs great. We have trouble with the door handles, but that's okay, because Ben can FIX ANYTHING and he's not afraid to tear something apart trying.

He's a tiller of the ground. Just like Cain only without the murder. He loves to haul in truckloads of horse manure so we can grow an organic garden. It gets bigger every year. Look at that awesome black dirt!

He has internal Jersey Mike's radar. No matter where we are he can find one, and if you don't think that's a big deal, try going to the beach and not having a sub from Mike's. This one is in Destin, Florida.

He's a painter. When he was in the Navy and we were trying to raise five children on Navy pay, he did a lot of painting to pay for big things like braces and vacations to Disney World. He actually painted the orthodontist's office in exchange for braces on one of the kids. Now he just paints to make my sunroom a happy place.

Remember when I said he wasn't afraid to tear anything apart trying to fix it? Here's the window in the kids' bathroom that was shot out by soccer-star Man-boy.

And for those of you who are new here, this video (produced by Abbie for our 25th anniversary two years ago) will introduce you to the birthday boy.


25th anniversary from Karen Sargent on Vimeo.

Be thankful ~

Karen