How I spent my thirty-eighth birthday.

My birthday was on Friday. Yep, another year older.

Andy was pretty cranky Thursday night, which I put down to just having a bad night, but he was not any better on Friday and I eventually figured out that he really wasn't feeling well. I thought it might be a reaction to his immunizations, though that was on Monday so it seems like a rather delayed reaction. Kate was having "intestinal difficulties" and was not much fun to be around either.

In the middle of all this, I had scheduled a visiting teaching appointment. (This is something that we do for church--pairing up to visit each other every month.) My companion is Sister Nebeker (she's a grandma) and we have three ladies that we visit. Doing the stereotypical thing and leaving it till the end of the month, we had appointments on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday that week. Friday was my idea. I told Doug we could go out on Saturday and do something for my birthday.

We visited Sister Wood on Friday. I took Andy with me. At that point I was just glad to get him out of the house, and hoping he would fall asleep in the car (which he did, after complaining loudly for a while).

My family called my cell phone while I was at Sister Wood's house, to sing Happy Birthday to me. I asked my mom if I could call them back after I got home, but she said that Dad and Kirsten were about to leave to go grocery shopping, so I put them on speaker phone so they could entertain everyone. I've mentioned that the Happy Birthday tradition has evolved into not just singing but singing badly. As badly as possible. Betsey truly outdid herself and performed what was quite possibly the worst rendition ever. My mom was laughing so hard she couldn't sing at all, and it sounded so bad Sister Nebeker couldn't even tell what the song was. (Even though I had mentioned the day before that it was my birthday, she still didn't recognize it. I thought that was hilarious.)

Andy slept the whole time we were there and started waking up just as I was getting home. Good timing. Doug was outside with Kate, playing with the neighbor kids. After Andy woke up and ate again, I bundled him up and took him outside too. I wanted to get a picture for my birthday, so I got my camera and enlisted Doug to take it.

I chased Kate down and tried to straighten out her hair a bit with one hand. Then I squatted down and called her to come stand next to me. She practically knocked me over trying to climb on me, and then ran away and put her head down on the ground, messing up her hair again. I tried to herd her back over ("Stand here, sweetie... stand... here... on your feet...") while she fidgeted and jiggled like she had restless leg syndrome all over. When I finally got her to stand next me she wailed, "I need a little rest!"



Andy was not happy by this point either. This was the best we could do!

Doug took Kate to the library for a while. I don't even remember what I did while they were gone. Probably tried to comfort Andy. Peter called and sang to me, and Barb and Kyle did too. (They don't do the "badly" part.) There was a ward activity that night (breakfast for dinner) that I kind of wanted to go to, but we decided to stay home. Doug got a couple of pizzas from Cerello's.

By nighttime Andy was feeling better, and he just slept like a log. Yay!

The next day we went to Bombay Bistro for lunch. It's more expensive than most other Indian lunch buffets I've been to, but the food is really good. Kate didn't really eat anything but rice and naan, and then spent the rest of the time playing with the ice in her glass and asking, "Are you done yet?" We make a lot of Indian-type foods at home, but she just didn't want to try anything there. She's missing out.

Andy slept for a long time that afternoon and we got some good de-cluttering done. Still lots more to do!