Another year older, but mental pretty much the same

So, for my birthday this year, Johnny abandoned me.  Not really, of course, but his grandmother's birthday is a few days before mine and she was turning 90 this year.  Since Johnny was switching jobs, and still had some vacation days, and frequent flier miles, he saw no reason to not go to Utah for the festivities.  There was really no reason why we all couldn't go except that we were saving our miles for the family reunion coming up, I was in the middle of a house project, and . . . I can't remember any of the other excuses, but I'm sure they were good.  

Anyway, at the last minute, we wondered why Johnny couldn't take Miss Lee with him, since she flies free anyway, and it wasn't a business trip.  We ended up agreeing that it would probably be a great present for his grandmother and Lee's grandparents and extended family to spend some time with her.  Plus, with only two (fairly) independent kids at home, I might actually get some work done.  That ended up being quite true. 

 I was able to not only finish mudding away the horrible faux cinderblock wall finish on one of our living room walls, but paint it and hang up picture frames as well.  

This is the layout.  I took the picture for Johnny's approval, but
wanted the paint color to be a surprise.

They went in about the middle of this wall.
Ignore the laundry, I have three kids.

So on my birthday, I took my two big kids to see Inside Out.  Sadly, no one prepared me so I was caught crying with no tissues.  The kids enjoyed it.  I liked it.  And afterwards we got the obligatory free Slurpee.

Not to be neglectful (which was hard after all my friendly ribbing), Johnny sent me long-distance birthday flowers.  Lovely.  And I made my favorite cake, homemade angel food.  The kids decorated it for me.

Delicious!

 I also got to spend some time in my sewing room (with the kids awake!) making myself a birthday present - a new pencil skirt, cannibalized from a skirt a co-worker had given me 8 years ago or so, that I had liked, but never quite looked good on me.  I threw some lace over it, and voila! one of my new favorite skirts.

Photo curtesy of Joy.

The finished product.

All in all, a great birthday.  And when Johnny got back, we went for a birthday celebration the next weekend.  We went to the Historic Park in our neighboring city, which I had wanted to check out for awhile.  They had a park volunteer dressed in historic costume giving a tour of the Dr. Gilbert house.  Plus we got a personal tour of some of the other houses, church and train caboose by an English man.  A nice accent was a pretty good present.  Then Johnny took us to a Hibachi restaurant for dinner.  We've only ever been to one once before, when we were house hunting in Virginia, so The Captain was barely 1.  It was surprisingly successful.  Meaning, I didn't want to kill any of the children.  They hardly complained at all, were very well behaved, and enjoyed their dinner.  A birthday miracle.

 Then we went to Coldstone for dessert.  The kiddos hadn't tried that before either.  It was crazy busy, so we took the ice cream across the street to the beautiful fountain to eat.  Lee got to see many "dog dog"s, and even pet and be licked by one, so she was happy.  It was an amazing day.  One of our best.  It's true, my children getting along is the best present.

I love The Captain poking his head up in this picture.