Loving Life

Yesterday was my birthday. I finally turned 34. I've been saying that I'm 34 for about two years now. Now I can stop correcting myself. I'm not sure why I was so stuck on 34.  Guess I wanted to be that age for awhile now. Anyway, it was a fun day, but nothing too out of the ordinary.  I started celebrating it the night before since I knew the day of my actual birthday was going to be busy.  I made a nice dinner - chicken and sausage jambalya, my favorite tomato/cucumber marinade, garden green beans, and cheesy garlic toast.  Yum! We topped that off with some peach pie I had made that day. It was discovered that there was no ice cream to go with the warm peach pie, so we had to run downtown to get some. What's birthday peach pie without ice cream?  It was every bit as good as it looks. : ) On my actual birthday, Aaron took me out for lunch. I had planned on being a good blogger and bringing along my camera to take pictures of our lovely mid-day date, but I forgo...

Whew! It's hard to believe it's already August.  Time sure is flying by. I've kept myself quite busy the past few weeks. School will be starting soon and so that means last minute summer projects are underway!  Here are just a few things I've been up to lately: 1. Cleaning out the girls' room.  Things got quite a bit out of control up there. We were waiting for some cooler days to venture into the room to clean it out before school starts, as their room gets to be stifling in the heat of the summer. Yesterday and today were the days to get it done.  We sorted and cleaned and ended up with two trash bags of clothes to pass on to a friend (we have a great source of hand-me-downs for which I am super thankful!).  We also got rid of three trash bags of "stuff" to lighten up their room.  It feels so good to have that done.  A special thanks to my MIL for her help on the morning of Day One - it got us much farther along in the process than i...

Guess how many pictures I took of David's birthday party?  TWO!  Aren't you impressed?  I took one at the beginning here and one at the end.  We took one of his buddies to an indoor play place that had mini-golf and a play set thing like they have at McDonalds type places, except on a much larger scale.  Here they are playing golf. I LOVED it!  I sat there indoors for two and a half hours and read a book mostly uninterrupted.  It was so delightful!  The girls had fun playing while David and his friend alternated golf and then playing on the jungle gym.  We picked up a few more kids on the way home and they all had fun playing one of those games I despise.  The type where you have to conquer the world and each turn takes approximately 2.5 hours.  Here is picture number two - blowing out the candles on the pathetic castle cake.  It was attacked by cannons during the night before, so I had to do some quick repair work to get...

I love the month of August.  It's the time of fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob.  I finally got my first taste of the season of corn. If I had to wait much longer, bad things may have happened.  I also love August because it's my birthday month!  My birthday isn't until the end of the month, but I've taken cues from my dear husband and declare a "birthday season" for myself.  Aaron was born 10 days before Christmas, so his birthday is always getting lumped together with Christmas, so he solved that problem by giving himself a whole birthday season.  It's basically an excuse to do all sorts of fun things for yourself in the name of your birthday.  I fought the concept with him for a number of years before giving in and going along with him as long as I could have my own season as well.  It's been a great thing.  I must admist, he's on to something. So last Thursday, my Mom and I kicked off the official start of my birthday season together....