Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday, for another hour and18 minutes. I am now 31 years old.

This morning, my sweet husband cuddled with my while I was very sleepy and wished me a Happy Birthday. Then he went and got in the shower and I continued to sleep. Off to work he went. Don't I have a great husband? He goes to work every day for our family. He doesn't love what he does, but he loves us and because of him, I stay home everyday with my children. I'm so blessed.

I woke up to Ella chattering next to me. I was still so sleepy. I would fall asleep while answering her chatters and she loved me anyway. What a sweet girl.

Later I woke up for real due to more Ella-chatter. It was a good way to wake up. Then the phone rang. It was my friend and her cute kids singing me a halting Happy Birthday. They even stopped mid-song to say that they were "so off!" It was adorable. I felt so loved.

My phone rang and rang. I think I got 5 or 6 birthday wishes before 9am! It was a good morning. Except when my kids found out I was going to play laser-tag without them for my birthday date. They were mad about that and I told them they had to be nice to me because it is my birthday. Eventually they concurred.

My mom called and she and my dad sang me a lovely birthday song, complete with harmony. Then she offered to take me to lunch. I chose a charming local restaurant with awesome fish tacos and incredible house salads. My taste buds were so lucky this day!

Then I wandered some local shops with my mom, smelling lots of lotions and soaps. My olfactory sense was overloaded and assaulted and a little angry at me. But I'm still so blessed, olfactory glands and all!

I went and picked up my children from my friend, Devon. She is an earth-angel and I love her. Dearly.

My chore today was the living room and dining room and I failed to do them this morning. Shame on me. But I redeemed myself and did them when I got home. Then I made frosting for the cupcakes that were previously prepared on my behalf. I frosted the cupcakes and headed out to play for my birthday party.

I planned my party all by myself. I rented a local laser-tag place for a whole hour! Did you know that that's a really long time to play laser-tag? It makes one's quads really tired. REALLY tired. And it makes one sweat. A LOT. Many family members and a few friends joined in our fun and I came home completely pleased with myself for planning my own party. I said over and over to Dustin, "That was really fun, huh?" After the third or fourth time he laughed out loud and said, "Yes honey. It was very fun." His tone was a little bit patronizing, but I didn't mind. I planned exactly what I wanted and I was completely thrilled with the result.

I like me. I'm so blessed. Happy Birthday, Me!

This picture was taken in 2007 in a Cadillac Escalade. That was a fun car, indeed, to drive! Aren't we all so blessed to get to drive cars and get everywhere so quickly? Life is grand, is it not?

Love, C

Thirty going on Thirteen...

Or maybe it's twelve. Either way, it was buckets of fun! As the majority of you know, Stephanie Meyer's new book, Breaking Dawn came out on Saturday, August 2. My friends Rachel, Maria, and Carmen and I went to the midnight release of this MUCH anticipated end to the Twilight saga.

Rather than just be normal... normal being going at midnight to stand in line with hundreds of other people... we decided to really play the thirteen year-old card. Rachel and I made shirts for ourselves and Carmen. (Maria is actually more like sixteen and was too cool to wear a sparkling declaration of love for Edward!)Me, Rachel, Carmen sportin' our sparkling TEAM EDWARD shirts.


Maria did wear black to match us and put a sticker on her shirt, so we might be lookin' at somewhere around 15 years old. ;)


Can't you just feel our excitement!! We were nearly bouncing off the walls with it!


This was the line ahead of us, and it extended far behind us too. This was only the people with "A" bracelets, meaning we were the first bunch. There was also "B-E", I believe. That's how many people were there! It was madness. I loved it!


And here we are with our much coveted treasures!

My big plan for when I got home was to sneak off and read for a few hours before I went to bed. But I was thwarted by a sick little girl. Ella ended up throwing up all night. So I was on mommy-duty instead! I finally fell asleep at about 5am and only read about 150 pages in between Ella sicking up.

I finally finished the book this morning, and, while I liked it, I didn't LOVE it like I did the other three. I was actually relieved that I only enjoyed it rather than obsessively LOVED it. It made it easier for me to not be sad and depressed when I finished the book and knew it was the end of this series forever.

What are your thoughts on the book? (If you want to talk specifics in a comment, please forewarn those who haven't read it yet by saying SPOILER before you type your spoiling comment!!!!)

Anniversary Weekend

So, as many of you know, we went out of town without our children for our anniversary last week. If you are a parent, you know that anytime you get to go somewhere as a couple without your kids, it's a thing of beauty. We were lucky enough to be able to go for two nights and the better part of three days. My parents kept the kids. (Special thanks to Mom and Dad for your awesomeness! You SO TOTALLY ROCK!) We went to a small resort kinda place up Ogden Canyon. It was wonderful! When we go on a car trip without our kids I always marvel at the fact that I don't have to turn around and fix anybody's seat, pillow, blanket, food, toy, DVD or anything else! I can just sit, face forward, the whole trip and talk to my husband uninterrupted!

I wanted to do a quick recap of our trip so I will remember it in days to come! First of all, the drive down was nice. We enjoyed each other's company, Dustin and I. We arrived at the place we were staying, checked in, checked things out, and then left to go find some food. We ended up driving all the way back into Ogden, which is not really that far... maybe 15 or 20 minuets. We went to the Olive Garden. We were ravenous by the time we got there, so the breadsticks and salad tasted better than they EVER had! Then, our meal came. Dustin's was fine. A bit of a letdown he said, but fine. Mine was HORRIBLE. I ordered Parmesan crusted tilapia. There was something wrong with the fish. It was so nasty... it had some weird chemical flavor to it that I still cannot quite put my finger on. I also thought perhaps freezer burn? Anyway, it was nasty. They took it off my bill, but that doesn't make up for the weird things it did to my stomach that night. That's ok though. There were no major bathroom episodes, just strange stomach action.

We went back to our studio (yes, it had a fully equipped kitchen too) and flipped through the T.V. and found a movie to watch. We don't have T.V. at our house so flipping through T.V. was novel. I fell asleep with my head on Dustin's side, and, for a wonder, he stayed up almost two hours later than me! Miracles do happen, ladies and gentlemen.

We woke up kinda late... about 8:30, got ourselves ready for the day, ate granola bars, blueberries, and strawberries and headed out! We drove around the little valley we were in. It was breathtaking! We went and got some lunch at a little place right on the beautiful Ogden River. It was the best hamburger I'd had in a long time. Then we went into Ogden and wandered a bit.

We made it over to the Salomon Center and played a bit of glow golf... Miniature golf in black lights, then we just walked around.



We decided to go to a movie. So, we bought tickets for Iron Man. We had about an hour and a half to kill before the movie, so we went and checked out the indoor surfing thing they have there... FlowRider, it's called. It was AWESOME! I wanted to try it really bad, but didn't have my swimsuit. We will definitely be going back sometime. Check it out...

That guys works there... most people don't look so graceful. They just eat it... a lot! It was highly entertaining. A guy that was there with his son told us to go check out the indoor skydiving place. I was glad I saw the surfing thing first. I thought I was excited about Flowrider until I saw IFly! Holy MOLY!!! I REALLY want to try this one! This is also the instructor and he was amazing! I had just gotten my camera out, and then he finished, but you get the idea.

Oh how I wish I had the rest of the footage of him. It was SO cool. Oh well, I'll just have to go back and try it myself!

So, we killed enough time, went an watched Iron Man... loved it! Then we left and got some food at a place called Rumbi Island Grill. The main course was ok... but I got a side salad that was killer. MMMMmmmm.... I'm wishing I was eating it right now!

Went back up to our place and got a free movie rental from the front desk. We rented Hot Fuzz. It was hilarious! After it was over we flipped channels for a bit and then decided we were tired.

We got up the next morning, read for a bit, and got all showered and dressed. Then we packed up, sadly. I was bummed that our little getaway was drawing to a close. We drove into Ogden again to get some food. Stopped at a beautiful waterfall in the canyon...


Continued on into Ogden and went to the Village Inn for breakfast. I had a REALLY yummy breakfast that was REALLY cheap! ($4.89) I was thrilled. Dustin liked his too. Village Inn... who'd have thought?

After we ate I really wanted to go rollerblading. So we vacillated between blading on Weber State Campus or the Ogden River Parkway. The River Parkway won out, and I'm so glad! It was a beautiful paved path that followed the Ogden River out of the mouth of the canyon. It curved in and out of thick trees. It was simply delightful. The only bad part was it is not a loop, and we went downhill first. So, we had to go back up to get to our car. This ended up being not as bad as we thought except right at the top. We were both huffing and puffing by the time we got to the car, but we felt good to have squeezed in some exercise!

We took off the blades and were getting ready to leave town... but my mouth had a hankerin' for a Jamba Juice. We asked around and found out that the only Jamba Juice around was way out in Riverdale. We had time, so we went on a long and winding quest, and finally found it. Taste buds were satiated, and we had our little treat for the car ride home.

We got to my parents' house and realized that we did, indeed, miss our kiddos. We were happy to see them, hug them, and kiss their little faces. We jumped right back into parenthood with kids fighting all the way home. What more could a girl ask for? ;)