Happy Birthday To Me!

As the years have gone by, I feel like I've really gotten to the point where I'm able to appreciate any effort made on my behalf for my birthday.  Thanks to my super low expectations, I can honestly say that this birthday was great, despite the fact that my birthday evening was taken over with helping kids with book character costumes and the day that was supposed to be my "celebration" day (Saturday) was taken over with kid drama and a sick kid.  Hahaha.  

For starters, Scott totally took the cake for best present ever by taking over carpooling duties in the morning for me.  My best boy for life drove back and forth from the high school to home to the elementary and middle school to home and then on to doggie day care, the junior high, and preschool before finally heading into work.  I can't even put into words how dreamy it was to not have to the leave the house in the morning.  Instead, I leisurely made myself breakfast then finished binge watching the last two episodes of a show we've been taping all season that I've just now gotten around to checking out.  It was magical.  Not gonna lie.

Once I got enough of all that laziness, I decided it was the perfect time to de-dog-stink Grace's bedroom!  Happy birthday to me!  Hahaha.  In all honesty, though, I kind of a love a good project like that.  So after cleaning up Grace's room and getting everything up off the ground that I could, I used a borrowed carpet/steam cleaner to go to town on her carpet.  It did a pretty good job, and after following up the next day with baking soda all over the carpet and vacuuming it up (plus diffusing some peppermint + wild orange essential oils) I'd have to say that her room officially smells back to normal!  ;)

But back to my big day.  I went ahead and got some more cupcakes for us to sample and -- spoiler alert -- I don't think this bakery makes a bad cupcake.  After picking Grace up from school and giving in to her request to stop at the grocery store on the way home so she could buy more Pop Tarts to keep in her locker, I was pleasantly surprised when she walked out of the store carrying a bunch of lovely flowers for my birthday.  It was a really sweet gesture, even if it was bought with my own money.  Hahaha.

For dinner, we went out to eat as a family (where I had the BEST BBQ chicken pizza ever) and then we hopped from Party City to JoAnn's in search of all the items needed for Alex and Jane's book character dress up parade that was happening the next day at school.  I figured we had to contribute something to Jane's look, since I was so embarrassed to find out that one of the other moms in her group costume effort bought all of them shirts and bandanas to wear along with printed signs.  {The 4 girls were going as One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.}  Jane was super excited to pick out knee high socks in the different colors for all the girls in her group.  And thankfully, Alex was excited enough about going as "Slappy" from the Goosebumps series that he was willing to have faith in my efforts to create his look.  Because there was no way I was buying my 7 year old a tuxedo for the event despite how much he really wanted me to.  Hahaha.

I bought a black T shirt and white fabric paint at JoAnn's and then after doing a quick Google image search for tuxedo t shirts, I created my own stencil/pattern and whipped up my most favorite DIY look I've created to date.  Hahaha.  Seriously, though, I think this one is a winner.

I drew in the buttons and tuxedo lines with a sharpie.

Scott was able to find a bow tie and red flower for Slappy's lapel while they were at Party City.

To really top off this stellar tuxedo look, he was wearing Isaac's sweat pants because he didn't have any that were dark enough for his taste.  The parted and slicked down hair was just icing on the cake.

Jane was the the Blue Fish, in case you couldn't tell.  :)

Just another shot of my lovely birthday flowers.

As I said before, Saturday was supposed to be the day we celebrated my birthday "for real," but that didn't exactly happen.  Two hours of my morning was dedicated to detangling Jane's hair, after which I took Ethan to get his requested Chick Fil A, while the girls and I took Maxwell to the Petco next door to work on socializing him a little better.

(I made my job easier by just chopping off her pony tail before starting in on the work.)

After arriving back home, Scott surprised me with the present he'd been working on all month -- a crossword puzzle entitled "A Lotta Lagniappe." (Because he's so clever like that!)  He also created a scavenger hunt with clues to lead me to the puzzle.  It was pretty awesome.  :)

It was after this pleasant moment that things got a little dicey.  For some reason, the older kids had gotten it into their heads that they wanted to go to the skating rink.  Even though we were supposed to be celebrating MY birthday and I had no desire to go.  I had finally relented and Scott was going to take Ethan through Jane to go skating, when I had to call them back home after talking to the after hours nurse at our pediatrician's office.  You see, Alex had woken up that morning with a super high fever (105.3) which had gone down after giving him some children's Motrin.  When he started crying again around 2 that his head was really hurting and his stomach was, too, I got out the thermometer once again and this time his temperature was at 105.8.  Boo.  I was a little worried about dehydration at that point, so after giving him some more medicine, I called the doctor and the after hours nurse said he needed to be taken to the ER to be checked out.

Long story short -- he tested positive for Influenza Type A.  And then, when we got home, the older kids were still worked up into a tizzy about how they should still be able to go to the skating rink.  Those kids!  Sometimes they're the worst.  In the end, I told Scott to just take them because the next best birthday gift of all would be to get them out of my hair, so he took one for the team and brought them to the skating rink.

And to keep this shorter story from getting longer -- the next day (Sunday), Jane came down with a fever, and then yesterday (Monday -- which ended up being a snow day) Isaac came down with a fever, and today Grace came down with a fever!  Yay!  I mean, BOOOOOOOOOOO!  All in all, it's been a birthday week to remember.  Hahaha.

With yesterday being a snow day, however, I gave myself the gift of not caring and let the kids have a total freebie day so that I could do whatever I wanted.  My wants included watching American Idol, reading a whole book, and laying out a game plan for my 40 Before 40 so that I actually have a shot at achieving some of these goals!

I spread out the 40 objectives over the next dozen months.

And I made a To Do list for March:  start couch to 5K running program; pick a classic movie to watch for the month; send 2 Thank You cards (because I accidentally forgot to send one in February); start Back Blogging on Sundays; get my driver's license and license plate taken care of; be thinking about what to write (for submitting to publication); and read 4 books a month (I checked one off the list yesterday).

And that, my friends, is a wrap on my 39th birthday!  It had some lowlights, but all I'm focusing on are the highlights.  ;)  Thank you and goodnight!