I had a very nice birthday, thanks for asking

So, my actual birthday day was disappointing in that I suppose I haven't quite outgrown the silly expectation that my birthday should be any different from any other day. It isn't. It never is. I should be used to that by now. Elisabeth snitched my cake and ate the top 4th of it before I discovered her (along with a container of salsa and some cream cheese or something from out of the fridge. Do I not feed her? Why does she raid the fridge all day long?!?). There was much fighting and screaming. And messes. And homework. And all of the normal day-to-day-ness of raising kids.

But Zac brought me home flowers and a hazelnut chocolate bar, by my request, and I indulged in a not-so-healthy-but-very-tasty dinner and lemon cake and vanilla ice cream. Yum, yum, yum.

Abigail gave me this picture of a dolphin that she drew, knowing that dolphins are one of my favorites things on this earth. :) And she gave me a little booklet of poems she wrote for me, which was very sweet, entitled "The Best Mom Ever."
Now, how could I say I didn't have a good birthday after getting a gift like that?!

Here's one of the poems:

Some moms kick
some moms hate bunnies
some moms stick to honeybees' honey!
But I know a mom
that's great to me you see
Hip Hip Hooray!
She belongs to me!

Isn't that cute??

Zac and I got to go on a super-date last weekend to celebrate his birthday, my birthday, our anniversary, and any other special occasion we might have missed. We hardly ever get out on "real dates" so this was very exciting for us. My mom came down to babysit for us and we went to see Avatar, which was fun. We shopped at Kohl's with some free Kohl's cash we had. We ate dinner at the Olive Garden. And then we stopped by Target thinking I might get some new mixing bowls for my bday. Well, and we ended up buying me a bookcase instead. :) That's a little bit more fun than mixing bowls, I have to say. And now I have had the enjoyment of rearranging books and deciding what to put where and how to organize them and all of that. I love it. I got some new books for Christmas, you see, and have run out of room on our other shelves. So we justified the bookcase as a sort of "need." Sort of.

Anyway - then Fri. was the girl's night party-party. So stay tuned . . . !!