Surprise?!! For What? ... and JBW in the WSJ (Wall Street Journal)

Have you ever had a surprise party thrown for you, but didn't understand what the party was intended to celebrate?? Me neither... until now.

Let me explain:
Earlier this week, I picked doug up at the airport after a weekend skiing trip with buddies in Canada. I had promised Jeanne that we would both stop by the shop on the way home, as the girls said that they missed Doug and wanted to say hi (he typically works at home and only makes it to Reno once or twice a month).

Well, can you imagine my surprise when we walked into an empty shop? We started calling out names, only to have Jeanne stick her head into the shop and quietly summon us into the newly acquired back room. The girls (jeanne, ashley, amber, sandy, kristen) were all in there (with cider, candles, and a homemade coffee cake - yum) and shouted "SURPRISE!" We were stunned. Surprise? Surprise for what? We had absolutely no idea... Crap! Is it valentine's day already? Or is it my birthday? Maybe it's doug's birthday? I was drawing a blank (as was doug). I simply couldn't come up with an explanation... and then sandy cleared it all up for us:

For the past 3 months, Sandy has been quietly watching the growth of a teeny tiny number that appears in the corner of our internal shipping software. When doug wrote this software for me 7 years ago, he never expected that the business would grow so much & that other people would be using the software. Anyway, he put a little counter in the bottom left hand of the screen… it shows the number of days since we first met.

Well, the counter is just a number on the screen (it doesn’t say “days together” or anything like that) – if you were using our system, you might wonder what the number meant, but you’d never guess unless he or I told you (or if you were an amazing guesser). Anyway, I guess I had told Sandy a few months ago what the number meant (darned inquisitive Sandy - she always wants to know what everything means!) and apparently she started watching the counter like a hawk.

Turns out, the counter hit 4,000 on the day that we stopped at the shop. It was our 4,000 day anniversary!! Can you imagine our surprise - not only that it was our anniversary, but that the girls had gone to so much trouble to celebrate it with us? I almost cried. We are so incredibly lucky to be surrounded by these women, it's ridiculous. Some days I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

Speaking of... an article came out today in the Wall Street Journal that mentions us very briefly (and the February Lorna's Laces Limited Edition Color - Simply the Blues):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123448965975880443.html. It's only 1 sentence (bottom of the 5th paragraph), but it's still incredible press and I can't tell you how excited i was to see it... Lst month we were written about on usatoday.com and forbes.com also - knitting is SO POPULAR!