What he didn't know at the time was that I had already tracked down a couple of them and was planning on surprising him with as many as I could lay my hands on.
There's a few more that he actually has...the Presque Isle Triathlon shirt, the St. Patrick's Day 10k shirt, the VaDu shirt would all be wonderful additions to our quilt. So, 10 or 15 shirts from now we'll have a quilt full of trips and holidays and everything else!
The first batch...the stories behind them and the scheming that went into them:
This shirt is from Chick's Oyster Bar in Virginia Beach, courtesy of one Mr. Brian T. McCune. This was, by far, the shirt that required the most scheming. Chick's is where we had lunch after the Virginia Duathlon during our week long road trip in April. I scoured the internet looking for a shirt from there, I emailed the restaurant, I thought all was lost...until Ryan forwarded an email to a bunch of people and my opportunity presented itself in the form of an email address. Of course, B.T. let it slip that I had emailed him when he was talking to Ryan right before Christmas and I got harassed about that for a couple of days, but it all worked out in the end!
Another part of the road trip was a few days in D.C. where we walked around the better part of the city. We spent a lot of time in the Georgetown and Dupont Circle areas of town, so I figured this would be a good addition. Of course, when I tried to order it, they were back ordered. So, after a few emails and calls back and forth with the nice young lady at the Georgetown University bookstore, I had procured a shirt the would easily fit a 6 year old. Seeing as I only need the logo from the front, though, this works out, too!
One of the most difficult to track down, the King Tut shirt is from the tail end of that same road trip (we get around!). We met my mom, Cindy, and Amber in Philadelphia for the exhibit at the Franklin Institute. This was the first time Ryan was subjected to the power core of the Henneman family matriarchy. All four of us together should have been enough to scare any man away, but he's a tough cookie! (Side note: the reason he fell in love with me is probably the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies he got early Saturday morning when we set out on this adventure.)
The next piece of the puzzle is the shirt from the London start of the Tour de France. This was another toughie. I had seen these shirts at the tour, where we spent (an agonizing) six hours or so watching men in tight pants on bikes. I mean, we saw the fantastic beginning of the race...yeah, right...that's it! I think the plot was actually hatched somewhere around this time to make another quilt. This was actually the first one that I found when I started collecting.
This one probably seems silly, but Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the first movie we saw in the theatre (it was in England, so it has to be theatre) together. This one was tough to get also, because it was months after the release of the movie when I was looking for it. Thank you Hot Topic, for selling random things!
And last, but certainly not least, the MS Regatta shirt. A lot of scheming went into this one, too. I had to get it from Ryan's parents (thanks, again!) without Ryan finding out about it. Not as easy as it sounds, but we managed.
This is only the beginning. Just give us a couple of years and there will be another great quilt (along with a great marriage and probably a toddler!) in between sweaters!
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