My Birthday

Last year's birthday ranked pretty low, so I decided I'd make a more concerted effort to enjoy this one. I started by inviting everyone who could make it to join the kids and I at A Park Above. We were joined by Whitney Marquez and her boys (her son Rhett was in Hyrum's school class last year), the Jensen's, the Richardson's, and Mindy and Riker. We were there from 9-11 am. The weather was lovely and the outing was delightful. I love these ladies and their children so much!

While we were gone, Matthew stayed home and mopped the floors. We got home with a few minutes to spare before Mercy's preschool teacher came for her home visit. Mercy will be in Ms. Amanda's afternoon class at Helen Cordero. Ms. Rhonda, who also taught Abraham, will be the assistant teacher in her class. They both seemed nice and Mercy is more excited than ever to get started. They gave us the number to get her set up for a speech evaluation and I was able to call and make an appointment. 

After the home visit, we loaded everyone in the car and drove to Sprouts in search of Bubba's Burgers and some fresh produce. We got the fruits and vegetables, but weren't able to find the burgers so we had to stop by Target as well. The kids weren't thrilled to be running errands, but they were well behaved so I'll call it a win. After the shopping we came home and I took a little nap.

When I woke up we opened presents. I got tap shoes and a dance floor from Matthew. Kip and Naomi gave me a decorative jug, a really neat book about the Salt Lake Temple, and some monogrammed note cards. Becky Jensen gave me the vest she'd "stolen" from me at last year's Christmas gift exchange, which was very kind and thoughtful. I felt very loved.

At 4:30 Mindy and the Jolley boys came over so Scott could play piano. The Jeb Brown's joined us half an hour later for a BBQ dinner. Matthew and I sous vide cooked all the meat ahead of time, then he grilled chicken, burgers, bratwurst, and hot dogs. It was a lot of meat! We also had chips, fruit, and soda. I made two different ice cream cakes for dessert. The first was a more traditional one with chocolate ice cream on the bottom, a layer of crushed oreo's and fudge, then vanilla ice cream on the top, all frosted with homemade whipped cream. The second was a peanut butter snickers cake with layers of brownie, a cream cheese/peanut butter/whipped cream mixture, chopped snickers candy, and chocolate and caramel sauce. Both were very rich and very delicious.

After dinner Mindy, Hannah, and I left the husbands to clean up and take care of kids while we went to a combined Relief Society and Young Women's activity. We played volleyball at the Sundoro South park and it was really a lot of fun. We played until dark and then I took Hannah and her niece Jida home. 

I wanted a fun day that would make me happy, so I chose activities that I think are fun and make me happy. I reached out and extended invitations, asked for help, and made preparations in advance so that my vision could actually be realized. And what do you know, it was a really great day! What's really interesting to me though is that when I look back on the day's events, it doesn't look much different than many of the fun filled days we've had this summer. I've learned over the past months and years that I can make my own happiness and looking at the big picture of my life, it appears that on the whole, I'm doing a pretty good job of it.