Belated Birthday

Nathan was working on my birthday so we celebrated it this weekend.  I got to sleep in this morning and then I was woken up by everyone coming into my room singing "Happy Birthday" and giving me breakfast in bed!  Mindful of my new commitment to being healthy (more on that in the future), Nathan and the kids had made me two healthy oatmeal pancakes with applesauce on top instead of syrup.  There were also two small eggs and milk.  Yummy!  The kids had each made me a card.  I love how good Annalee's writing is getting!

We glanced outside at one point and saw this fellow in the garden!  We have seen various song birds in the backyard before, but never a regal predator.  Nathan says it's a sparrow hawk.  I'm sure he came just to wish me a happy birthday.

I decided that instead of making or buying a cake that would beg to be eaten over and over, we would go out to a restaurant--just for dessert--and that way I could have just one piece of really good cake.  While I was getting ready to go, Vander wanted to have his hair done too.  He was so excited to get gel in it.

We had a gift certificate to Johnny Carinos (thanks, Laura!) so we each ordered a different dessert and then shared.  Vander got blueberry cheesecake.  Nathan got lemon cake.

Annalee got chocolate molten lava cake with ice cream, but it was rather disappointing.  It was gluten-free and tasted weird.  Also, the middle wasn't very molten.

I got Italian chocolate cake with ice cream.  It was really good, as I'd hoped.  I could have eaten all of it, but when I started on the second slice I realized I was full and took it home for later.

Bellana got to share my ice cream.  She started yelling VERY LOUD if I didn't give it too her fast enough.  After all, it was all hers!

Going out for dessert was perfect.  It didn't take long at all for the food to come because they didn't have to make it.  So we didn't have a battle with the kids being bored.  We didn't end up with lots of leftovers that my hips don't need.  And with the tip the whole thing cost us $6!

I got some other great presents.  Nathan brought home flowers Friday night.  My sister got me quite a few children's books in Spanish from the author of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie."  Annalee was bummed by them at first because she couldn't read them (she can read English but hasn't learned to read Spanish yet).  But last night she decided to give them a chance and we read them and talked about the words and tried to guess what certain words were, based on the pictures.  She and Vander fell in love with them and stayed up "reading" them in their beds, trading back and forth when they finished each one.  Thanks, Sarah!

The Relief Society in my ward usually gets a big candy bar for sisters on their birthday but they got me a veggie tray instead.  I laughed and really appreciated it!

My mom, aunt, and Nathan gave me some money that I will use to print a few more books of my blog.  I print it out each year as a scrapbook of our family activities but I have gotten a few years behind because of the expense.  I am so excited about this gift!

My brother got me a giftcard to Amazon and I used it and another gift card to buy my very first desk chair!  The ones we've had in the past have always been hand-me-downs or from garage sales.  But I will finally have a really, really nice one.  I can't wait for it to get here!

The other gift card I got was from winning the grand prize in a haiku contest--crazy, huh?  Back in October, Mozy (the company that backs up the files on my computer so I don't lose them) had a haiku contest.  They wanted us to write about the scariness of losing our files.  Nathan's grammy had just passed away and I had her on the mind.  I quickly whipped off a haiku and thought no more about it.

Great-grandma's pictures
GONE--but now, back from the dead.
Wish she was back, too.

The judges liked it the very best of all of them!  They sent me an email on November 3rd to tell me I'd won a very large gift card.  But because I rarely check that email I didn't see it until my birthday!  I was nearly sick, thinking I had missed out.  But when I contacted them they still gave it to me!  What a great birthday surprise.