Early Wedding Gift

I know, I know, you're probably rolling your eyes and thinking "You barely just got engaged!", but I got and gave Nick an early wedding gift.  I figured (and rationalized) that if the point of keeping a gift a secret is to surprise the recipient, then I don't need to keep it a secret because he will be surprised no matter what.  Take that logic!   He sure was surprised all right.  I could barely contain myself while I was shopping for BBQ supplies at Costco.  On top of that, he took Emmy for a run so he wasn't home when I got home.  I practically bombarded him at the door, but kept it in for about 10 minutes before I spewed.

After letting him cool down and have some water I told him that I got him a wedding gift already and asked if he wanted it now or for me to give it to my mom so that she could keep it as a surprise.  It is a good thing Nick is like me because he wanted to see what it was.  I handed him the yellow envelope and he said, "Oh no, what did you do?"  As he opened it he looked at the Southwest plane tickets to Austin, Texas.  It took all of three seconds for him to start yelling "no, No, no, NO! YOU GOT ME F1 TICKETS?!"  He didn't even have to look at the actual ticket voucher to know what we were going to Texas for.  I did however, have a picture of the race track behind the plane tickets page just in case.  It helped affirm his assumptions.  Can you imagine if they weren't Formula 1 tickets?  Oh the disappointment that would have followed.  The best part is that his eyes watered up as it all started to sink in and he walked around the apartment in a daze.  He was trying to post on Facebook, but his words were not coming out coherently.

We will be sitting at Turn 6, which he also geeked out over.  Apparently
that is where everyone will have to slow down and could potentially be
crashes and passing.  I picked it because turns are much more exciting than
straightaways and it was much more budget friendly than Turn 1 or Turn 15.

We got lucky in that we are staying with a friend of Nick's so we will be saving a lot of money since most of the hotels were already sold out or over $300 a night. Even Days Inn was $200.  Days Inn!  We will definitely be taking them out to a nice dinner and Nick offered to buy them a gun.  It's Texas.  They like their guns.  

For now I'm just excited. I knew that he would love the gift and I got butterflies in my stomach when I saw on the F1 site that it was feasible.  Originally, I had wanted to get him Evo racing school lessons at Sears Point, but once this idea was in my head, it totally trumped the racing lessons.  When I told my mom about my idea her response was, "Will he remember this as his wedding gift 30 years from now?" My response back was, "Yes.  He said that if we go to Monaco on our honeymoon he will get down on the ground and kiss it. He stays up in the middle of the night to watch these races.  Yup, he'll remember it in 30 years."  I figured since the track is literally being built as I write this that if he does want to kiss the ground then it will be a little bit cleaner than Monaco.  Though I have no doubt that if we do somehow make it out to Monaco for our honeymoon that he will kiss it anyway.  And I have to kiss those lips! Yuck!  

After everything had 100% sunk in and he was done looking for rental cars and I was watching backlogged episodes of Army Wives, Nick said, "You win.  There's no way that I can possibly top this gift. This is like me being able to bring you to the real Hogwarts.  This must have been how you felt when I proposed."  Mission accomplished.