May 31, 2009 Birthday Week

May 31, 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

Today is M’s birthday! We’ve had a lot of fun celebrating all week. Monday was Memorial Day. We talked a lot about what we wanted to do, and couldn’t come up with any great ideas. The rainy weather was a bit of a damper on things too. The very exciting thing that happened was that Q moved her things from her apartment to our house. She has changed jobs and will be staying with us part of the time! We all are thrilled. We worked a lot during the day on projects around the house that needed to be done. We got several checked off our list which felt great! They will also come in handy with all the visitors we will have soon with the baby. We made it to the pool for a little bit, but some thunderstorms shortened the visit. Q and I were on our way to the pool when the boys came back reporting that it was closed. After cleaning up we started off the birthday week celebrations by going to Red Robin. Q’s birthday was yesterday, so M made sure she signed up for all the free things. We had a great time at dinner, and it was a great way to have FHE too.

Tuesday B-man had preschool. I spent the time he was gone working on things around the house. That afternoon we ran some errands. The rest of the day was really quiet. That night was book club. Q came with (which was great!) and we talked about The Middle Place which was very interesting. It has some interesting things to discuss with others too.

Wednesday was a slow day. It has been raining so much that it makes it hard to go do anything fun during the day. That afternoon Q watched B-man for me while I went to a doctor’s appointment. M was able to come to this visit. We thought it might be a good idea for him to meet the doctors before I deliver. Hopefully he can come to more appointments since he has three more doctors to meet… That night was mutual. We had a combined activity at home of one of the leaders. It was a fun activity, and then afterwards I went to dessert with some friends to say farewell to the Young Women’s President. We are really going to miss having her around. Her family is moving to Richmond very soon. We stayed so late that we were literally the last people out of the restaurant and the manager was counting the money. But the people were very kind and didn’t hurry us at all.

Thursday B-man had preschool. I went to visit teach one of the sisters in my ward. She is very chatty, so by the time we were done I went to pick up B-man a little early from preschool. That afternoon was very slow. That night M went to see “Star Trek” with a group of friends. He had a lot of fun seeing it on an I-Max screen.

Friday morning B-man and I took advantage of the first sunny morning we’ve had all week to go to the farm and pick strawberries. I couldn’t decide how many to pick, so I ended up just picking as many as I could while we waited for the tractor to come back and pick us up. The strawberries were delicious. After stowing the strawberries in the car B-man and I then just played. A friend met us there with her two kids while we were playing and B-man and her boy had a great time. I have recruited a bunch of my friends to join the farm. So it will be fun to be able to go with others this summer. B-man discovered that he can now reach and turn the pedals on some pedal cars that they have on a dirt track. He did a bunch of laps having a blast driving his car. He was doing a great job of steering; I guess having him “drive” all those times on our street are actually making a difference! We packed a very small lunch and had a picnic with our friends before riding with them in the tractor to the strawberry fields and then taking the tractor right back to the beginning. We then got in our car and headed off home. That night (after much debate) we did some more birthday celebrating. We took B-man with us and went to dinner at a favorite restaurant that does a free dinner and dessert for birthday people. We had a great dinner and didn’t realize how long it was taking. We were just starting dessert when we realized that we were running very late. Since B-man and I were very full, I drove B-man to the babysitter’s house. (We are back in the babysitting co-op.) I then raced back and picked up M and Q off the street and we raced to the movie theatre. We bought tickets and raced to find seats just as the previews were starting. We were sure that we would get awful seats, but since we picked an older movie we had almost perfect seats. We saw “X-Men Origins” and were thoroughly entertained. It was a great birthday celebration for the birthday boy/girl. As we were putting B-man to bed we made a sad discovery. His caterpillar “Speedy” was no longer living. It was SO sad for B-man. He kept saying that in the morning he would be better. Speedy had been pretty lethargic for several days, but we were hoping it was because he was getting ready to make his big metamorphosis. Dying wasn’t the change anyone really wanted. B-man was crying, which broke my heart. In the end we let him wait to “bury” him to make sure he was really dead. Although M and I were VERY sure of his state of being…

Saturday was Q’s birthday! She was so nice and tried to avoid making a big deal about it. We went garage sale hunting together, and didn’t find much. While we were away M sold some of our things at a community garage sale our neighborhood was having. He also took B-man to his second basketball class. B-man really likes his class and his new shoes that we got for him to wear. We only let him wear them at basketball. M says that he listens and works really hard, but is obviously a year younger   than everyone else. Dribbling is a hard skill for him. That afternoon we had a fun lunch together and then B-man went to a birthday party. At the last minute I went too because they needed someone to be the “lifeguard”. I was happy to do it just to be safe. The party was a water theme and they had a bunch of different water games set up all around the yard where the kids could run between and play with. It was very unstructured, which worked perfectly for the party. While we were at the party M was test driving cars. He found a great deal on a new car and was thinking very seriously of buying. As he was test driving one of the cars he got a phone call from a friend that was just about to go into surgery asking for a blessing. So he raced back to the dealership to return the car and then quickly changed at home before heading to the hospital. He reported that as soon as he was finished with the blessing they whisked the poor guy off to have his appendix removed. While he was gone B-man, Q, and I went to the pool. The water is still slightly too cold for me to in too far, but it feels good to wade in and get my feet wet. M came to the pool for a few minutes before we all headed back home. For Q’s birthday dinner we made homemade pizza. Then we blew out candles and she opened a few presents before B-man had to go to bed.

Today has been a great day. M is a simple person to please, and I realized that the only way I pampered him today was with food. We started with pancakes in the morning. (I offered other things, but he was being nice and chose pancakes.) He then went off to his meetings. Church was very uneventful except for one thing. It is a fifth Sunday and all week I have been so happy about that because it meant that a bishopric member was going to be speaking to the kids. The only problem was that during opening exercises in Young Women it suddenly dawned on me that I was WRONG! Very, very wrong. So here I was with no lesson prepared, and I hadn’t even brought my manual in an effort to make my bag lighter. Luckily my very good friend is the Mia Maid advisor and she happily agreed to let us combine classes for the day. It was so embarrassing! I felt so unorganized and irresponsible. B-man also had gotten it in his mind that we were having a big party for M. All before church he had a list of five families that he thought were coming over. So at church he made sure to invite all five families to our house for dinner and dessert. Luckily I was present at most of them and able to laugh it off. It would have been a great idea if we’d had enough food/space for that many people. After church our home teachers came over for a quick visit. Q and I then worked on M’s birthday dinner. I made beef stroganoff (a favorite growing up). I was so happy to have Q’s help. I banned M from helping, but it meant that I was struggling for help. Without Q it would have been a long time before we ate! While Q and I were making dinner M was helping B-man bury Speedy. Apparently B-man was very sad, but in the end he did flush Speedy himself. Tragically he had to flush more than once because B-man was only doing half flushes. B-man didn’t even want me to know because he was so sad about it, but he did recover and was happy later. B-man does not like to cry in front of people when he is emotionally sad. If he is hurt he will cry, but he tries to hold in his sad cries. Whenever I see him doing that it makes me ten times sadder. Eventually we ate a great dinner, and topped it off with strawberry shortcakes. It was a big success. When we were putting B-man to bed M got his one present. Some swim goggles. He is planning on swimming a lot this summer for exercise.

We love you all!

R, M, and B-man