An Expensive Treat

That's right, I bought this for a treat, not food storage. I love Shelf Reliance's freeze dried corn. Yes, Josh thought I was crazy for spending $20 on a snack. Oh well, it's the simple pleasures that get you through the day.

Chloee turned 5!!!

I have made it a tradition that on each child's birthday, they get to open one present in the morning and it is their "birthday outfit". Now, my girls love this, I may have to change that if I ever have a boy. She woke up with her present sitting on her nightstand. I can't believe how much she has grown up.

That night, we went out to Winger's for her birthday with Amy and the boys. Amy was passing by on her way up to my mom's house. The kids loved to stare at themselves in the mirror in our booth.

Does it look like we have enough food?

After dinner, we went bowling. Chloee LOVES to bowl.

It was so crowded. Of course it was, it was a Friday night and the last day of school. Lots of tweeners and hoochies everywhere. Who am I kidding, those two are one in the same.

Every time I look at this picture, I can't stop laughing. It's just too funny!

Ditto for this one.

I don't really know what this is. I told Josh to bowl so I could take a picture and this is what he did.

Yeah, I suck at bowling, as usual.

At 9:30 it turned into cosmic, black light bowling. Yes, you read that right. We didn't get out of there until a little after 10 and Amy drove another hour up to my mom's house and turned around and ran 24 miles the next morning. No, I did not write that wrong, it was TWENTY FOUR miles. Crazy woman! She is training for her marathon that is in a couple of weeks, so I guess I can say that it's not like she just went out to run 24 miles for fun.

We know how to spell our kids' names. The worker put them in. Josh killed with 122 and most of the kids beat me, at least I can say they had bumpers but I don't think that really would have mattered.

Here it is, almost 11 pm and we are doing presents and cake. Yep, we are super awesome parents.

Making cakes is kind of my thing I do for my kids' birthdays but this one I didn't have any extra time because I was making cake pops for Chloee's party. I bought this poodle (which Chloee picked out, I didn't) from a bakery for her to blow her candles out.

She did an awesome job. We had our cake and ice cream and we put the very ornery girls to bed. Josh and I then started working on the cake pops and were up until 2:30 am doing these little devil cake pops. Note to self: These take a long time, these take a lot of patience, these need to be done over the course of a few days to set up. Not me, I wait til the very last possible second.

Out of all the ones I wanted to do in the book, Chloee wanted the little chicks. This is my first attempt at cake pops. By all means, they don't look awesome or professional but I thought for my first time and it being 2 am, they don't look so bad.

The second batch turned out better than the first. We kind of got the hang of what we were doing at that point.

I have never done a friend birthday party for either of my kids. I did family ones for Chloee for 1 and 2 but the years of 3 and 4 for her were not good times in our lives, so we just celebrated the 4 of us. Chloee loved her party and had a lot of fun with her friends there.

They had pizza and drinks.

And had a lot of fun with the water. We did a big water party. We had water balloons on the tramp with a sprinkler under, this huge slide I borrowed from my friend, slip & slides and wading pools.

The kids loved the cake pops and the ice cream sandwiches. As you can see by Halle's face, the edible black marker I used for the chick's eyes, runs.

My friend, Melissa's little girl, Maizey. Yes, she put water balloons in her swimming suit. I love this picture. Maizey's face makes me laugh.

Well, it was hectic and it was tiresome and the clean up as horrendous but Chloee and all of her little friends had a blast.

A few things about Chloee:

*She loves to sing, especially primary songs.

*She loves to have stories read to her.

*She has a very tender heart.

*She gives compliments all the time. For example, "Oh mom, I love the way you did your hair today. So cute!"

*She loves to write thank you notes and cards to people.

*She loves to do her own hair.

*She loves to learn and can't wait for kindergarten.

*She loves soccer and T-ball.

Happy birthday my dear, sweet Chloee.

I Had A Birthday...

Shout Hooray! You know that old primary song? Well, they still sing it. "You had a birthday, shout hooray!" Which is what I did all day long. The best present EVER was that Josh took the day off of work. I got to sleep in, shower without anyone bugging me, get dressed and ready at a leisurely pace and got to go shopping without children screaming and hanging all over me. Any mom out there who says that's not the best present ever... doesn't have children like mine. :)

A flower delivery man came and dropped these off in the afternoon. They are from my sweet sister, Amy. The girls were obsessed with the balloon and it did cause many a fights.

You can't really tell in this picture but these are treasure map clues. Chloee and Josh hid all of my presents all over the house and these had the clues to each one. It was very cute and Chloee had the hardest time not telling me where the next one was.

The girls made me cards.

One of the gifts Josh got me was a book on how to make Cake Pops. I asked for this book because I thought it'd be fun to try.

My sweet friend, Melissa, watched the kids that night so we could go out to eat. She is so good to us. She watched our kids even though her husband was out of town. 6 kids all on her own. She's crazy for offering but we did take her up on it.

We went to Texas Roadhouse. It was very good.

After we went back to pick up the girls at Melissa's and had cake. Well, cake is a relative term. I don't like cake. Josh made me some exquisite NY baked cheesecake and I have to say, it is the best one he's done in all the years.

Yum, Yum!

Sure, why not reinact what Josh did on our wedding day with the cake?

I had a lot more cake on my face then and I was sniffing pieces of cake for a few hours. This time, not so bad.

Josh's "blue steel" face from Zoolander.

All in all, I had a great day. It was sunny outside and I had lots of hugs and kisses from my girls. Josh did a lot to make my day special and I am so appreciative of him.

Here's to getting older! Even though people still think I'm 16. Maybe I'll like that more when I'm 40. I have a baby face and I'm super short. Since I've gotten fatter though, it hasn't happened as much. Nice.

Memorial Day Weekend

On Saturday we went down to the Hogle Zoo with some friends. It started out sunny and warm, then in the middle it started to rain and it got cold. It went back and forth quite a bit. A lot of the exhibits are closed because they are building new areas and they had to shut down the old ones. The zoo always seemed so much bigger to me when I was a kid.

Of course Halle fell asleep on the way down. Not a long nap = super ornery Halle. That was fun.

Our car is already a pig sty. We really should just eat all 3 meals and snacks in the car, it already looks like we do. We will DEFINITELY get our money's worth when we get it detailed.

The girls got new hats.

Why is every kid fascinated with that big ball in water right when you go in? Weird.

They have a dinosaur exhibit going on right now. Some of the dinosaurs spit water out at you. The kids loved that.

I remember this drinking fountain from way back when I was a youngster, going to the zoo.

You gotta love Nate in the background taunting Halle.

These pants ARE for girls. I know she kind of looks like a boy in this outfit. It doesn't help that she won't let me do anything with her hair. Josh loves this combination.

Chloee with her real mother.

On Sunday, we went up to my parents' house for dinner and to go visit Micheal's grave for Memorial Day. We wanted to be back home on Monday to do yard work. That didn't end up panning out, the weather was horrible and rainy the whole day. My parents woke up with SNOW!!!

Josh made this flag with the girls when we got back from church. I laid down upstairs to try and get my headache to go away. They cut out the pieces of construction paper and then wrote all the of the things they are grateful for. Chloee did the stars.

We all wrote a message on the back to Micheal. When we got to my parents' house, I laminated it with packing tape. It looked so good. We didn't get up to Micheal's grave until 11 pm, on our way back home. We didn't get home until midnight. We just can't stop talking when we get together as a family.

Here Josh is putting the flag in by Micheal's grave.

I am so grateful for the freedoms that we enjoy. I am so grateful for those who have given their lives. I am so grateful for the families of the loved ones who have passed on, for their sacrifice as well. I love Micheal and I have a deeper appreciation for what the men and women of our Armed Forces do and for the sacrifices they make every single day.

I miss Micheal. I know that is written a lot on my blog but it is so heart wrenchingly painful sometimes. I saw a man in Walmart the other day. I was behind him and he had on khaki cargo shorts a black hoodie, Chaco sandals and short hair. The man had the same build as Micheal, he even walked like Micheal. I stood there and for a split second I honestly thought it was him. He turned around and as he did, I thought to myself, "Ok, there is no way his face looks like Micheal's, I'll feel better." Sure enough, he did look like Micheal with a few different features.

I stood there, frozen. My heart skipped a few beats as I wanted to race up to him and hug him. Tears streamed down my face as I stood there thinking I was staring at a ghost. It was uncontrollable. I couldn't stop staring at him. It was like I was dreaming. The man soon realized that I was staring at him and crying. He grabbed his wife, they both looked back at me and I still couldn't stop looking at him. He kept looking back at me as he was scurrying to get away from the crazy freak show who was crying and staring at him. I stood there and felt as though God had just played a very mean joke on me.

I will never be same. I can never look at the flag the same way. I cannot sing the nation anthem and not be moved by the pain of loss. I cannot sing 'My Country Tis of Thee' in church and not feel stinging tears well up in my eyes. I will never think of Independence Day as just a holiday. I am forever changed in ways that I cannot express. I am forever changed because of what happened in my life after Micheal died.

I am proud to be an American.

I bleed Red, White and Blue.