Birthday week has come to an end! It was kind of an odd week. I was feeling a lot of anxiety about already being at the end of a two week sewing break (because of Caden’s parties!), but at the same time wanting to spend the week relaxing, reading, fun shopping, and just plain doing whatever I felt like doing. I felt like I earned the break, but was also frustrated by how few sales I’ve been getting lately – because I haven’t been sewing! It was a Catch-22 kind of week full of mental battles that really just left me stressed out and exhausted. BUT there was a lot of fun stuff thrown in too!
Monday and Tuesday I did a lot of clean up and reading. I had to take the boys out of school early on Tuesday for a dentist appointment. For dinner we went to a fun library celebration with free pizza, popcorn, and desserts. And then I went to my first yoga class! I actually really enjoyed it. It was hard work and at one point I felt like my feet and ankles were about to break on me. There were only two people in the class, including me, so I felt the pressure to do everything perfectly. Which was good! But also left me pretty sore for the rest of the week. I’m definitely looking forward to going back and hopefully more people will join in.
This was also Homecoming week. The dress up days were a little boring this year. They used to do five days of dress up with pajama day always being everyone’s favorite. No pajama day this year. 🙁 Wednesday was hat day. Only Shepard would cooperate. (Weekday mornings are now a battle because Caden wants to READ all morning instead of getting ready because READING is always a good thing and he can do it whenever he wants! :P)
I spent my morning meandering around the antique mall. Every six months or so I like to go and hunt down treasures. Sometimes I’m looking for accessories to put with my dolls, but most of the time I’m on the hunt for well loved vintage teddies and dolls that need to be rescued! I actually found quite a few Raggedy Anns and Andys this time around, so I had to be picky. I ended up with these two teeny tiny dolls. The one on the right is about two inches tall.
On Wednesday night, we had my first birthday celebration with Steve and Cindy at Pizza Ranch. I ate way too much! Cindy had bought me a piece of cheesecake and cupcakes for a special dessert too. Very thoughtful!
Cindy, Shepard, and I harvested all of our gourds and mini pumpkins. We had so many! I was a little sad that I planted like twenty white pumpkin seeds and ended up with a whopping three white pumpkins. Those are my favorite.
Presents! They gave me a new set of Pioneer Woman dishes to add to my growing collection. And a candle, earrings, spicy dressing, and some fun money that I think I’m going to use to either buy a bracelet I’ve been eyeing up, or a couple of books. I’m pretty book obsessed these days, but also have like a hundred sitting around the house I need to read (plus over 500 on my kindle!!). It was a really nice night!
Thursday was jersey/team day.
Thursday night I went to dinner with my friend Laura at Monk’s. I had a volcano monk-tini, which was a mango rum concoction. I also had my all time favorite chicken sandwich. It was a really great night of catching up. I really appreciate that she went out with me. I need more friend time in my life. It’s so easy to hide away when things get overwhelming and exhausting. But we still need each other.
Friday was school spirit day.
I spent the day with my mom, which is what I usually do on my actual birthday when it falls on a weekday. We went to Marshall’s, World Market, and spent a huge amount of time at Ulta and Sephora looking at makeup and perfume. We had a delicious lunch at Granite City. It was a little bit rushed since we had to drive so far and only had about three hours to fit everything in once we got there, but it was fun! We made it back to Columbus just in time for the Homecoming parade. They hold the parade at the end of the school day so all the kids can sit with their classes and watch. My mom sat with Shepard and I stood by Caden. Right when the parade started it also started raining. Terrible timing!
Friday night we had pizza for dinner, though I was still stuffed. And then we had a family movie night watching Princess Bride. I was worried I would think it was cheesy after not seeing it in so long. But I still liked it! The boys were distracted at the beginning, but then they got really into it too.
And Saturday was my birthday! I slept till 6, which is the latest I’ve slept in about a month and a half. Without necessarily wanting to, I usually wake up between 3:45 and 4:15 every single morning. SO ANNOYING. Anyway, I got out of bed late enough that Greg took care of the boy’s breakfasts and getting Annie out.
Shepard wanted to do presents right away, so one by one they ran to the other room and got me a present. Greg gave me a DNA test of Annie. I was shocked by the results!! I’ll have to do a full post on all the info they gave me soon. We were told by the humane society that she was a Shepherd mix, the vet guessed Australian Shepard mix. And that’s what she looks like, so that’s what I tell everyone. Lo and behold, ZERO DNA matches to anything in a Shepherd family. I’m not surprised by the Golden Retriever, just because she has longer hair like that. But the Siberian Husky and Alaskan Malamute?! I guess that maybe explains her mostly black hair and her very strong desire to PULL, but I’m otherwise pretty shocked! It was an awesome gift, though. I like knowing for sure what she is and now I can obsess over it forever.
Shepard and Greg built me a little family minifig display. I love it! Caden gave me some nice bluetooth headphones to wear around the house. I also got a new kindle case, instant read kitchen thermometer, cast iron melting pot, and my favorite tea in k-cup form.
And Greg gave me a framed picture of the original Raggedy Ann patent. I love it!
Cards. 🙂 I love Caden’s Annie picture and Shepard’s tree.
We went to the dog park together in the morning. It really is amazing how much difference exercise makes in Annie’s personality. She was SO obnoxious and wild on Friday night and after Saturday’s dog park visit she was completely calm and sweet.
For lunch I made some baked turkey sliders. I had plans to also serve an Asian salad and some chips and dip, but it was kind of a weird morning of everyone eating random things all morning long, so we just had sandwiches.
I read and took a nap after lunch and then we went to my favorite pumpkin stand/farm. They have all their pumpkins set in their yard with like twenty different varieties of all shapes and sizes. It’s my favorite place to go every year because they have so many and they’re pretty cheap. Annoyingly, it was pouring rain by the time we went. The one thing I wanted to do! We haven’t had rain in about a month and of course it comes on my birthday with all of my outdoor plans. Very disappointing. We still got our pumpkins, but it was a race to get them as fast as possible, with no fun pictures to show for it.
After pumpkins, we dropped the boys at Noe’s for a sleepover. I felt a little bad ditching them for half of my birthday, but I felt like a date with Greg was more important this time around. We needed it.
The plan was to walk around downtown Madison and feel like cool and trendy adults, maybe getting a cocktail somewhere, browsing stores, and dinner later. But the weather! It was super windy when we got there and by the time we walked to State Street it was pouring again. Without even realizing it until later, about a mile away from where we were walking a tornado touched down! We saw all the tree damage when we were driving home, but never heard a siren or anything. We were going in and out of stores and the rain was pouring almost perpendicularly. But a tornado in the sky we did not notice!
We had dinner and drinks at Belair Cantina near the capital. While I knew ahead of time it wasn’t going to be a fancy place (not really our style), I also wasn’t expecting it to be quite so loud and crowded either. We were seated at a longer table with other people. And the longer we were there it got so loud we could barely hear each other and people waiting around the bar kept knocking into my chair. Not exactly a romantic date. Which wouldn’t have mattered if we did that sort of thing often, but we don’t. Kind of disappointing. But the food was good! I had a watermelon margarita with a spicy pollo taco, Korean beef taco, and fried avocado and bacon taco. All with different slaw/salsa/sauce toppings. We both really liked the things we ordered.
After dinner I was pretty sick of people. We contemplated going out for dessert too, but nothing was jumping out at me. So we just went home and watched the movie Gifted. And that was my birthday week!
Anyway, good week, lots of fun celebrations. And it’s not over yet! I still have a party with my family today, drinks with my friend tonight, and a breakfast date with my friend and goddaughter on Tuesday. I feel like I’m probably really annoying people on instagram and facebook with all my birthday posts. But…I don’t care. If I want to make my birthday week special for myself I’m going to do and not apologize. You can make your birthday weeks special too. 🙂
