Yesterday, Adam and I had the opportunity to take maternity photos. This was not an activity that I picked out or honestly, to which I was even looking forward. However, we got the sitting and the digital prints as a baby shower gift and it was undeniably too good to pass up. So, I pretended that I wasn't like other pregnant women; I'm not too self-conscious, I said, it doesn't matter to me exactly what I look like at 33 weeks pregnant. Sure, we'll take some photos! It's a new time in our lives and one that should be commemorated!
You can ask Adam how well and how long that mindset lasted...it was about until I started picking out clothes for our photos. Thankfully for me, that isn't the point of this post, and so, we'll skip over my whining during that whole process and go right to the photo shoot.
Yesterday was an overwhelmingly beautiful day here. It was the perfect weather for an Easter weekend. As an aside, let me throw in that I absolutely adore it when the weather is beautiful for Easter. Easter is always beautiful in and of itself, but when the outdoors match our joy inside, it's even better. Ok, forgive yet another tangent and I'll get back to the story. So, we made the trek out to a rustic and gorgeous farm on the edge of Mt. Juliet. This is a well run operation; there were quite a few other customers participating in various photo shoots and several photographers working with different clients all at once. We met our photographer and got right down to the pictures. She was wonderful about putting us at ease and giving us enough direction for the awkwardness to fade. I even found myself enjoying it. We took pictures in a couple different outfits and settings around the farm.
The first "round" went uneventfully. We took pictures, smiled, and channeled out inner Derek Zoolander. Then, we changed our outfits (I may not have been able to pick just one for the photo shoot) and started on round two. At one point, during this set, the photographer set us up as though we were going on a picnic. We sat on a blanket amidst candles and a wicker picnic basket, as the camera clicked. The next direction came. "Ok, now look in the basket and pretend you're getting out sandwiches or something." I didn't think a thing about it. Aware of the camera, I continued to smile. I reached out to open the basket, with Adam at my elbow. I opened the basket and discovered that instead on an empty prop, it contained something for me.
It was an envelope, that was labelled "My Katy" in Adam's handwriting. My first thought was to assume that it was something the photographer used as a ploy to get real emotion. Maybe she had him write a note to me or a joke or something to earn a true smile, one not just pasted on for the camera. I opened the envelope, still out of the loop. Inside was a very cute, simple greeting card. As I opened the card, I realized that this gift was anything but simple.
I began reading and immediately noticed that the words were all lyrics...all from songs by the same band...my favorite band...Nickel Creek. It was then that I allowed my eyes to drift to the other side of the card. There were two tickets there, to a sold-out Nickel Creek show at the Ryman Auditorium...for last night. All I could say was, "how did you do this?" I may have continued saying that a few times....but I was floored and overwhelmed. We had originally tried our very best to get tickets the day that they went on sale, but were thwarted by scalpers. I had eventually pretended to get over my disappointment and tried to forget about the concert. During the entirety of my tongue-tied wonderment, Adam had a huge smile on his face and the camera continued to click away.
He was absolutely thrilled that he had surprised me. For some reason, I felt myself fighting back tears (we'll blame it on the hormones) and then was able to hear the rest of the story. Adam had been able to find tickets a few days before and hatched this plan in coercion with our photographer in order to make it a huge surprise. It definitely worked. He had given me no hint and I was shocked. It was wonderful! I absolutely love surprises.
The rest of our photo shoot flew by and soon enough, we were on our way to the album tour that I, like many other Nickel Creek fans, had been waiting for for years. They were amazing; exactly the same as they were eight or so years ago when I last saw them perform. This particular concert may have jumped up to my top spot of all time. The discomforts of being hugely pregnant weren't even able to distract me during the two hours while they played. It was a romantic, beautiful, heartfelt surprise from a husband who was definitely channeling his inner Ted Mosby. I couldn't be more thankful! I know he'll appreciate that it was the perfect beginning to "birthday month" (I was told I have permission to call it that just this year since it's a big birthday).
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