Feeling Perfect!!!

WARNING - MORE LIKE JOURNAL ENTRY THAN ENTERTAINMENT...


A few weeks ago I was telling Andy what I wanted for my birthday. He said not to be disappointed, but it's an incredibly busy time right now and we'd have to celebrate a little bit later. I know this and I typically extend my birthday to cover the entire month, so this gives me even more of a reason to! BUT - today was great!


Andy left early this morning to help make breakfast for seminary, so the kids and I got ready, ate, took Ben to school, and came home to waste a few minutes before the kids place in the gym opened. We did the gym and I really wanted to stay longer, but we needed to meet friends at the park. I went to pick up the kids and they were both playing! One of my pet peeves at the gym is when the kids are plopped in front of a show with all of that fabulous gym stuff to play on! So - yea - happy day at the gym! We went to the park and had a fun time with a few friends. Then Annie, Em and I went to meet Ben for lunch! It was fun to meet his little friends (and know that he has some that like him for him and not because I'm friends with their moms and they are thrown together!) and hear them talk.


Then we came home to a fabulous Hope/Grace day and got the house mostly spotless (no bags for the vacuum!! ggrrr) cleaning nonstop for 3 hours! Then hot dogs cooked on the George Foreman with fresh cantaloupe from the garden! We did family night watching a little video - then I went to dinner with some friends to celebrate another friend's birthday that is 2 days after mine. (this is really rambling now...I have never been able to leave out details!)


We went to a cute little Italian restaurant and had such a great time. Andy had to run out for a little while, so I came home to a few babysitters watching my very favorite movie! Andy came home just when the movie ended, and it was great! It was such a fun day!

My actual birthday started with morning produce - always one of my favorite things to do! When my sister came to pick her food up, so stayed and played with the kids so I washed all my produce and picked up around the house a little bit. Then she took them to Home Depot Day while Andy and I worked in the yard with an NHS service project.

Andy went from there to help some people move while I took the kids to my mom's for a little party - complete with lunch, cake, ice cream AND balloons!!! Unfortunately I thought the pool was too cold, so I was in the sun to entire time and have fried my back and shoulders. Not the best of ideas. We rushed home to get ready for the ward party and Andy and Ben spent about 30 minutes making a car for the egg race.

Fun times there - then we came home, put kids to bed, Andy did more church stuff and I watched Girl with the Pearl Earring (which we read for our book club a few months ago) which is good, but you miss SOOO many details from the book! Movies are so much better when NOT reading the book first. Alas, after asking a few times, Andy went to get some ice cream which we ate while watching a fuzzy Rangers game.

We heard Em cry a few times, which is NOT typical. SO I finally figured she was hurting from teething and went to give her some Tylenol, only to find her covered in throw up. Me thinks she ate a bit too much pizza... After the cleanup session I had lots of good cuddle time with Em. Then we all went back to bed and that was the end of my birthday celebrations!

Emily feels great this morning and we could both tell when she felt better - after the 5th time of throwing up - because she decided instead of just sitting and cuddling, she wanted to walk around and play. Nevertheless - need to give her the 24 hour throw up-free time, so I guess we'll be missing church today...

Convention Madness

Wow! That's about all I can say! She is a piece of work! Haven't ever sat through a complete speech on television before this evening - been reading up on all those topics. Go MP!!!

We have grass!!!

One year ago, we started tearing up our yard to put in a sprinkler system, in hopes of getting nice solid grass. It has been a very long year of looking like the 'white-trash' house and most of our sweet neighbors haven't said anything negative- just "looking good" whenever we are out there working. Last week, the youth from church came over and helped us get a jump on this weekend's project - laying SOD!!! We filled in the flower bed and started raking the yard and pulling out weeds. Friday night and all day Saturday was spent raking the yard in anticipation of 6 pallets of sod to be delivered Monday morning...
The sod came on a big huge truck (free delivery with our large order!) and then the man drove his forklift to put the pallets around the yard to where Andy directed him.

This was about an hour into the project. It's amazing how quickly the green changes the appearance. We didn't have the side of the house raked because we had run out of time, so Andy started raking that while I continued to lay sod in the front. We were about to run out of steam when our favorite neighbors came over to help! We finally finished laying the sod at 9 pm. Then Andy cleaned up for another hour. I haven't been this sore in a long time, and my fingers hurt the worst. But it looks great!
Yes, we just layed 3400 square feet of sod. My back hurts too. I told Andy this morning that he is moving like an old man. :) He worked so hard, but I said we cannot do another project this big all in one day because we did it ALLLLLL DAAAYYYY!!!

few cute pics

bedtime!!!
tickle time!!!
painting time!!!