You Say it's Your Birthday

This past Sunday I had my birthday. I am not posting this for added birthday wishes. I just need to explain to put it all in context. With Trent gone and all of that, I didn't expect an awful day, but I certainly didn't expect it to be anything special. That being said, it was a pretty great day, which was completely unexpected and made it all the better. I talked to so many adults on Saturday and Sunday that by the end of Sunday, I was hoarse. A special thanks goes to everyone who helped make that day so great for me. My dad sent me the prettiest most stylish top and jacket. It is really pretty and is aqua in color which I love. My mom bought me the Fitzwilliam Darcy trilogy books, which is so great. I love all things Pride and Prejudice. I was so surprised that she had heard of these books. Fun! I received cards with money to go spoil myself. :) I received lots and lots of birthday wishes on facebook. That is one great thing about facebook; you become aware of even more birthdays! My friend Chrissy made me two different cakes and brought them to church so that I wouldn't have to make my own birthday cake. They were, of course, soooooo good. She made me some lemon cake, because I love lemon just about anything, and she made a chocolate cake as well. The kids loved the chocolate. I have to say with the lemon and the chocolate it reminded me a bit of the movie Made of Honor. Anyhow, I digress. When I got home from church and got my Sunday call from Trent, I opened the gift he sent. It is a beautiful cartouche necklace with my name in hieroglyphics on one side and in Arabic on the other.

Finally, our friends the Carrolls, invited us for dinner. Dinner was so yummy, and my kids love their kids anyhow, so that was great to let them play. Mandy, who I have bragged about before, put together a little birthday present for me. She is an amazingly talented photographer. She was watching Sammy for me earlier that week and took just a few minutes and took a few shots of her and then made me an accordion style book with about 8 shots of Sammy. It is so great. Sammy is the child I struggle with the most right now, and though Mandy swears that it took no time to put this together, I love the pictures. They show her abundant personality. It helps remind me how much I love her and love about her even when she is driving me certifiably insane. :) I wanted to post a few of my favorites:

A Goofy Tradition

Later this week, some of my girlfriends through the JAG community and I went to lunch for my birthday. We went to Thai 99. Yummy. I think of my dad whenever I go for Thai. I usually order my stuff medium or occasionally hot. He gets his Thai hot/native Thai. Again, I digress. When we went to lunch a month ago for my friend Lisa's birthday, Sherri started something that has become a goofy tradition with us, and I love it, so I am passing it on. It probably sounds so dumb, but somehow, it is so fun. Someone brings a small gift bag or paper bag. We all go through our purses and find something to put in the bag and then give it to the birthday girl. Lisa got half packages of gum and a Wall-E band-aid (yes that was from my purse) hand lotion etc. I got half a container of tic-tacs, a coupon, a whole sheet of coupons to Circuit City as a bit of a joke, gum, hand sanitizer. It is just funny more than anything. Chrissie cheats a bit, because she bought new stuff particularly for the bag, but it was sweet too, because she brought a pack of Mike and Ikes for Sammy. I love this tradition and hope to find friends wacky enough wherever I go to continue it. It really is just a whole lot of fun.

A New Favorite

Jon has really gotten into Legoes lately. He has a couple of small thing our friends the Krajewskis gave him for his birthday last year, and he has really enjoyed getting them out and carefully following the instructions and building. I recently got him a 3 in one Creator set that makes a snake, a spider, and a bug. He will just sit and work at it and rarely needs too much help. The flip side is that he loves them so much that when necessary, grounding him from his legoes has been quite effective. They are really one of his very favorite things.

The Spider, which is the one he makes most often

The Snake The Bug

A Few More Thoughts on 24

O.k., so I just have one major thought and a few that don't matter after last night's episode. First of all, I am getting a major Sherri Palmer 2.0 vibe from the daughter. She is sooooooooo up to plotting her way into the inner circle for some reason other than just concern for her mother.

Also, that Janice character is really starting to annoy me.

Next Assignment

I heard from Trent, and though we don't yet have orders, we have his next assignment. He will be going to work at Coast Guard Headquarters, so this Warner family is headed to the general Washington D.C. area this summer.

Dust Devils / The Trent Report

Trent e-mailed us this photo and called it the Dust Devils. I thought I would share it. They had just been out in a dust storm and are in the necessary dust storm gear.

Torture Thy Name is Haircut

I don't know how many of you can relate to this, but Jon absolutely HATES to have his hair cut. We jokingly (well kind of) say that it is time commit torture when it is time to cut his hair. Though I am not great at it, I cut his hair. It is such an ordeal that taking him somewhere to do it seems pointless. When I mentioned that I would be torturing Jon via a hair cut on facebook, I told my dad I would take pictures. I also let Ashley video part of it. She is far enough away, and Sammy is making enough noise, that you can't really hear Jon that much. The steady crying came when I changed from a 6 to a 3 for the sides. For that reason, I don't feel as bad about posting it. In other words, you don't really get the worst of it. He flinched big time as I was contouring around the ear, so he has a gouge on one side. Oh well I guess. He is getting better, but we still have so far to go. I am out of ideas for how to help him with it. He HATES it. He has gotten better about scissor cutting. Maybe we need to move to that.

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

Snow Day!

It started snowing yesterday afternoon, and by 7:00, it was sticking to the roads. We finally got the official phone call just before 8:00 to let us know there would be no school today. When the kids woke up, there was a lot more snow than the 1 inch they had when they went to sleep. There was nearly 6 inches of it, which for us here is quite a bit. They were so very very happy to go out and play in real actual snow. I am a bit spoiled for Utah snow. This snow is poor snowman making material, but the kids had a great time all the same.

Ashley was very concerned about one tree from her first look out the window this morning. It was quite burdened with the snow. I was fairly sure that it was just sagging under the snow, but we had to shake off the bulk of it to make sure. Sure enough, the tree is fine.

Playing in the tree a few weeks ago. If it can hold those kids, it can hold 6 inches of snow.

weighed down with snow

Just fine now. It did make a really fun "hide out" for the kids to play in this morning though.

Finally, these pictures were all taken with Ashley's camera she got for Christmas. It actually is a video camera that also takes still shots. She wanted me to take some video of them in the snow and put it with the pictures. Here it is below.

Lost Teeth

Over the last couple of weeks, Jon has lost his first two teeth. He is the only kid I've ever seen who had loose teeth and didn't sit and wiggle them all the time. He would wiggle them to check on them if asked about them, but he otherwise left them alone.

When he lost his first tooth, he lost it coming home on the bus. He dropped it, thus literally losing it on the bus. He was pretty bummed but was totally o.k. with writing a note for the Tooth Fairy instead. The next day, I drove the kids to school. They were up late, so I let them sleep in a little and drove them rather than put them on the bus. They did ride the bus home though. When he got off the bus 24 hours later, Jon had found his own tooth. What are the chances?

Not quite a week later, Jon lost his other loose front tooth. This time he brought it home in a zip lock bag and was able to put it under his pillow.