My Less Miserable Birthday

Another year older -- and wiser too? I'm not sure about that. But we did have fun celebrating. My birthday was kind of a chaotic day. Well, a little bit. My landlord had to come work on my garbage disposal, and the whole day we had someone here fixing our radon problem. That brought more excitement than usual. We still got most of our work done. I ground some wheat so we'd have flour, but I didn't want to make dinner. I was sure Brandon would want to do that for me, but then we found out the girls weren't willing to help him, and we were so short on time that I pitched in and did a lot. We barely got dinner made when we had to shove the girls out of the house for one of their activity days. They ate their dinner on the way, while Brandon and I sat down to a peaceful meal. I'm not sure what he'd had at work, but he actually never touched his dinner. He ended up putting it in the fridge for lunch the next day, but I still enjoyed our conversation while I ate.

Brandon and I watched a movie (October Baby) while the girls were gone, and I took a few phone calls. After they got home we quickly opened gifts, and then headed out for my birthday ice cream.

My real celebration came a couple days later. I had requested a trip to see Les Miserables at the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. My parents offered to pay for our hotel as my gift, so they brought grandma and came along. We met them in Provo on Friday for lunch, and then drove down all afternoon. We went out to dinner, and then made it back to the hotel with a little time left for swimming.

Saturday after breakfast we ended up at the Frontier Homestead State Park. They had some cool quilts my mother was excited to look at, but the special part was they had one quilt on display honoring someone's 50th wedding anniversary. They had made the quilt to match the 6 dresses of their 6 daughters from an old family photo that was on display. But while we were there, the mother and all 6 daughters came in to get their picture taken next to the quilt. That was pretty neat to witness. We checked out all the carriages and pioneer houses they had.

Then we made time to stop by the pumpkin festival. Sophie had seen a sign for it and was very interested. They had all kinds of games for the kids: ping pong toss, pumpkin seed spit, cake walk, eat the doughnut off the string, balloon animals. And they got to pick out a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch. Chloe won the grand prize when she spun the Wells Fargo wheel, and got a frisbee and a full size candy bar! Sophie also landed on a space that awarded her a candy bar, but she opted for a pen instead. Kind of surprising, huh? They had so much to do, but we were in a bit of a rush. Had to get to lunch before our show started!

We had a very delicious and filling lunch, then went straight to the theatre. The show was very good. I've read the book, Chloe has listened to it on CD, but Brandon and Sophie had no background. After a couple discussions I think Brandon now understands the storyline. Here's a great big thank you to everyone who made my birthday special.

Oh, one last thing: do you have a cool bank? I do. I've been very happy with my bank, ever since my old one got shut down. What a blessing! But look what they sent me for my birthday -- what kind of bank encourages you to be less materialistic? One that I'm happy to do business with.