Sep 13
Everyone,
Tonight we celebrated my 31st birthday with birthday pancakes (cake batter cooked like pancakes with runny icing on top and candles) and a few fun phone calls.
I love that the kids were so excited to help me blow out the candles. I wanted to do it several times because it would make me and them happy.
It’s good to have a birthday.
Safire
Sep 13
Everyone,
Today we went here:
And rode this:
And we saw this:
All because of my birthday!
Presents are a part of a birthday celebration so I thought I’d invite all of you to join the party! You have a chance to win a $45 gift card from CSN Stores. They have EVERYTHING. You can get modern bedding, kitchen chairs (like we did a few weeks ago) or even luggage. You would have a whole $45 to spend on whatever!
Just leave a comment on here telling me what you would like to get. (It might also be polite to wish me a happy birthday, seeing as how it IS my birthday today.)
As a bonus entry, you can go vote for my picture at Parenting By Dummies. I’m a finalist! Just come back after you vote and comment to let me know how much you love my picture. Oh, be sure to say that you voted too!
Contest ends one week from today, September 20th. I will announce the winner on the 21st. And you can come back and comment (and vote!) once a day until next Monday.
Happy Commenting!
Safire
PS- You might come back tomorrow for ANOTHER present. And the next day for another. Because I want to give away 3 presents for each decade. 
Sep 13
Everyone,
Happy Birthday to me! Happy Birthday to me! Happy birthday dear me-eee. Happy Birthday to me!
We’ve had great leftover foods from take out last night (we ended up with burgers and fries for us and also burritos and chips and guac for the kids). I had a fun time at church with my class eating doughnuts and walking the halls with Pirate. I wore the skirt my Nana gave me for my birthday while I in Utah. I looked at my scrapbook stuff my mom gave me and rejoiced that I now have over 400 pictures to do. Maybe I can get caught up instead of still being on my trip to Hawaii that we took over 2 year ago.
The kids had a nice long nap this afternoon. I cooked dinner while the kids played and we had dinner followed by ice cream cake. So fun!
Of course, we gave the boys some cake. And that’s kind of where it went downhill from there. They were covered in chocolate. They needed a bath. I was talking to my family and Juice handled the bath. But he doesn’t do well with baths. I do the baths in this house. He was really sweet though.
We had presents which I was totally not expecting! I thought my fixed computer was my present. But Juice got me a battery grip for my camera. I’m so excited to use this! Juice’s mom also sent a few things. Thanks Mom! I’m excited to use the fizzy bath ball soon. And my brother sent along some amazon bucks so I see a fun package in my future.
It’s been a good day. Hopefully it will be a good year too.
Safire
Sep 08
Everyone,
Sunday is my birthday! I’m excited about it. Not because I have any presents to open this year (fixing the computer was my present, yay working lapple) but because I get to go out to eat. We rarely go out to eat. And even then, even more rarely as a family. We go out on birthdays and I order a lot of food in while Juice is traveling. Other than that, we don’t typically eat out.
Since my birthday is on a Sunday this year (and we don’t buy anything on Sundays) we’re going out on Saturday. (Reminder! The twin sale is this Saturday!) That really works out for me and the twin sale because I imagine I’m going to be pretty tired and not want to cook anything that night.
Here’s my dilemma though. I can’t decide where to go! So I need your input please!
Chinese food: always a favorite. The kids eat this well and we buy a ton and eat it for several days after. I even take the left over rice and all those little packets of soy sauce and make fried rice.
Mexican food: This place has amazing guacamole. I always end up eating too much here because it is just so good. Bonus, you can order on the internet and go pick it up. Then you skip the horribly long line. (Last time I was there someone had brought their DOG in with them! Ugh!)
Burgers: I know you can basically get burgers at every corner if you want but these burgers are awesome. You can customize them to eat what you want. I always get a chicken sandwich. But the thing I love love love the most is their fries and onion rings. I could eat an entire serving of these things and be happy. You can also order these on the internet and they have about 50 flavors of shakes to get too.
Notice, all these options are for picking up and eating at home. We are getting to the point where going out with all 3 kids is horrible. Someone always wants to walk around the restaurant and Butterfly complains when we don’t color with her. She is great at restaurants. I think because we took her so often. The boys are not going to be as great. I’m okay with that.
What would you do?
Safire
Sep 13
Everyone,
It was so much fun to have my birthday with my family this year! It seems a little small when people just call (I do love the calls in Maryland…it just seems to be missing something) and this year I had a blast! We had everyone over for cake and ice cream. That was fun. Butterfly helped me pick out the cake and we had way too much ice cream. But it looked so good at the store! I only had a tiny helping of it all because I was still feeling a little ill. Butterfly ate the frosting off of her piece and then ran around playing with Bee and Brother Bee and other cousins who came.
My family left around 4:30-5pm or so and we had a few friends stay longer. We were trying to play rock band on my dad’s big theater downstairs but the sync was off so we could never do it. Once all the family left and my dad fiddled with it more, we had a blast! Juice’s two best friends came and they stayed till almost midnight playing the game. My BFF Mink came but had to go because of a prior commitment. I am going to miss her!
After I got my fill of rock band, I went upstairs to take care of babies and to hang out on the computer with my mom looking at pictures. I am late for bed so this will be kind of short. We leave early early tomorrow morning. I think I am going to miss being here.
Presents included: a new card game (thanks Aunt Bee!), some money (thanks Nana and Grandpa Great and Grandma and Grandpa!), a new dress (thanks Mom! I can’t wait to use it.) and new clothes for my kids (thanks again Nana and Grandpa Great!). A good day.
Safire
Sep 13
Everyone,
Around 4am this morning, I woke up a little freaked out because neither boy had woken me up. Wow. I made sure they were both still living, and tried to get back to sleep. Once I was right on the cusp of sleep, Butterfly woke up screaming. She had a bad dream that Grandpa was going to eat all of her/my strawberry shortcake dolls. Great. (Like a good sick person I made Juice go see what was wrong. Or maybe like a good lazy person. Who knows.)
About 10 minutes later I hear her coughing and then she started screaming for Juice. He lept up again (he is such a good daddy) and I hear him say, “Oh Baby Girl!” Uh oh. I knew instantly what had happened. She caught my sickness. And there was puke everywhere. The sad thing was that she had had fruit punch for dinner and so this puke was red. All over herself, her bed sheets, and the carpet. Eww…
I sat with her by the toliet as she continued to empty her stomach and Juice gathered up all the sheets and got out the spot cleaner for the carpet. By this time the boys are up and screaming. I quickly put them in the same bassinet (hello play time) and cleaned Butterfly off. Juice is still messing with the carpet. Nothing is happening. Hmm… I suggest we pull out the carpet cleaner my parents have. So we find it and can’t figure out how to get it going. Or where the soap is. By this time Butterfly is jumping up and down on her bed absolutly loving having both of us paying attention to just her.
By now, the carpet cleaner is in pieces and Juice sends me in to wake up my dad to figure the stupid thing out. He wakes up, helps us out, and we get the red out with some up and out and a bunch of passes with the carpet cleaner. At least it came out! I take Butterfly downstairs for some ginger ale and she throws up several more times into a bowl. Ugh…I hate to throw up. But she says it’s like coughing. “Only your tummy comes up instead of your lung!” Funny girl.
By now the boys had had enough and so I had to go feed them back to sleep. Butterfly finishes her drink and Juice puts her back to bed. He climbs into bed and is out instantly. I am up with the boys for another half hour or so getting them into bed and feeling totally ill myself. 6:30am rolls around and I finally fall back asleep.
She woke up at around 9 pretty happy. I slept another half hour or so with Professor and then decided I needed to get up. My mom had taken the day off of work to spend some time with just me. So we went clothes shopping. I was feeling better. Not so woosy and crampy. Mink and Spider joined us because this is one of the few days I have left here. I left Butterfly at home watching movies (I think she watched 3 and a half today) and the boys came with me. I got a great new dress and some Christmas orniments for the kids. We were home an hour later than we expected, but we had a really nice time.
After feeding both of the boys (who were hungry hungry and cross today…I don’t think days of being ill and not keeping anything down helped my milk supply), Mink and I were able to go have a girly lunch at our favorite little resturant. I had half a veggie sandwich and some french onion soup. I don’t normally eat soup but it was very soothing on my stomach. Mink and I talked up a storm and just enjoyed being together. I am sad to leave her.
I came home ready for a nap and the boys were very tired. But both wanted to be held/nursed and I just couldn’t do it. Pirate kept making faces every time he was jostled and unlatched and Professor screamed and wiggled and kicked and made a ruckuus. I gave up and brought them down to grandparents who were happy to hold them.
Butterfly took a very long nap and woke up moments before I was going to get her up to go out for my birthday dinner with my family. That’s right, my birthday is tomorrow. I’ll be 28. So tonight we went to a Thai resturant and really enjoyed ourselves. But by the end the boys were done and screamed all the way home. I was able to get them both nursing with about 10 pillows and Juice’s help.
We started packing after they were done but I got hungry (yay a good sign!) and went down for food. I then got sucked into a movie with my mom, and now it’s very late. I hope I can sleep a little better tonight.
Tomorrow is our last day here!
Safire
Sep 13
Everyone,
This month Butterfly helped me change out our wooden calender (as she does every month). Whenever there is a special thing going on that month, I let her pick out the special tile. Well, this month is my birthday month. Butterfly picked out the cake with a candle (so you can blow it out Mommy!) and all month she has been pointing to the tile. “There’s your birfday Mommy!”
My birthday this year was low key. Butterfly and I spent the morning at a resource center with toys, play doe and paint. And then our friends (where I go scrapbooking every week) replaced the brakes on our car. So nice of them! And Juice gave me a present I was wanting for awhile…another dutch oven. I am very excited to learn how to use them. Now I just need a place to put the fire to use them…
I was also able to talk to most of my family, my MIL, and best friend. I was only missing one person’s phone call although he did send me an e-card.
All in all, it was an enjoyable and very low key day. Just how I needed it to be today.
Safire