My Birthday is Tomorrow!

My birthday is tomorrow (which is technically in only a few minutes now!) We're going to have our friends over and hang out, eat dinner and cake, and hopefully have a good time! Pretty much since after my 21st birthday, I've felt kind of "old" to be having birthday parties, so I tend to procrastinate on planning something for myself. I just decided to have my party (which is tomorrow) a couple of days ago. So, I don't really have much planned and my house is still a mess and it's almost midnight! Oh well, it will be fun anyway (I hope!)

Today at work we had CHEESECAKE to celebrate my birthday. It was deeeeelish. (It was from Upper Crust and it was Cheesecake, so there was pretty much no way it could go wrong). :) It's been a BIT hard doing my diet this week since we went out to Chili's with Tammy for my birthday last night (I had a big ol' burger, and later she had an ice cream cake for me), today we had cheesecake at work, tomorrow Carrisa is making a rainbow chip cake for my party, and next week my grandparents want to take us out for dinner. ACK! Last week I lost 3 lbs, but I'm preeeetttyyyy sure I might gain that back. Hopefully not MORE though!

Anyway, my birthday celebration started last night with dinner with Tammy and Ryan. She got me EXACTLY what I've been wanting since I started planning our Maui trip - a new digital camera! Wheee! I can't wait to use it! It's really compact and has way more megapixels than our old camera and I'm so excited to take it to Maui. This morning I was getting ready for work and I heard someone knocking at my door... I answered the door and there was Nae holding the "sassy pants" gift back and sweet little Joey holding a birthday bouquet of flowers for me! :) They were almost as big as he was, so they were kind of drooping but it was PERFECT! What a nice thing to start my day with! Nae got me a butterfly beach towel that I asked for for Maui and she ordered me some Mary Kay mascara, because I've been on the hunt for the perfect mascara! Sooo nice.

(I wish I had a picture of Joey holding them!)



When I got to work, my WBF (work-best-friend) had set up the cutest gift basket on my desk! It contained a yellow tea pot that I saw at the store when we were on our lunch break one day, a bunch of different teas, the cutest tea bag rest, some yellow dish towels for my kitchen, and a few other things. It was so cute and such a nice suprise! I love it.




Later we had cake and all of my co-workers signed a card for me. I got 50 bucks from the company as a birthday gift and my boss got me a gift, too (scarf & gloves).

So far it's been a great birthday and it's not even my birthday yet! I'm looking forward to spending time with our friends tomorrow. I always feel sooo blessed on my birthday every year. Sadly Nae & Seth already has plans so they won't be there, but that's okay! Oh yeah, I'll be 25 so... I ummm... can rent a car on my own now...? Awesommme! haha! :)

Thanks for making my Birthday so special, everyone!

Weekend at Lance's

My parents spent a week in beautiful MAUI and I watched Lance for part of the time they were gone, from Friday after work until late Tuesday night. He was sooo good! He is really growing up. He has his schedule DOWN. He knows what to do and when to do it and how to do it! Haha.

He was very good, and very sweet! My parents anniversary was during their vacation. Before they left, Lance said his gift to them would be to promise to be good and that they'd get a good report from his caretakers. He did a great job of keeping his promise. Lance wakes up very, very early. Haha. He would of course want to eat breakfast right after his morning shower, so I would have to get up with him. He would wake up, take a shower, and then come in and wake me up and get started on his day. He took care of everything. He made coffee every morning, and made my coffee special by adding a sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar to it. :) On Saturday we went to Chico and hung out at my house because I had a bunch of laundry to do and I didn't really pack for more than one night at my parents. Lance was VERY excited to play Ryan's Xbox360 while he was gone. Here is Lance carefully looking through alllll of Ryans games to see which one he should start with first!

I got three or four loads of laundry done and Lance had a blast! We also went to Subway for lunch which was of course a treat for Lance, and we were home in time for dinner. :)

Sunday we were up early again, but Lance let me "sleep in" until like 7:30 or 8! In the morning after breakfast, Lance sat on the couch and drank his coffee and read Oswald Chambers and then opened up my dad's bible to look for a verse that my dad told him before they left on their trip. For a while he couldn't find it and he was getting pretty frustrated. Eventually he found it and read it over and over until he memorized it. :) After thinking about how he got frustrated he said "Lynds... when God brings you to the bible, he doesn't want you to get frustrated. He wants you to have patience!" Haha. He's so cute. The verse he memorized was, Psalm 37:4, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." Here's Lance doing his studies :)

We went to church and got to see the boys. :) We spent some time at my parents, and Lance played his rented video game. Then we went to bible study at Lynae's and Lance helped with the kids and played on Nae's computer. It was so great to spend time with the boys. James watched a Veggie Tales movie with the Wion girls. He was a little bit scared because there was a big "Rock Monster" in it and I saw him close his eyes a few times but he didn't cry. :) He was brave!

The next two days we were up very early again because Lance had school starting at 7:30 one day and 8:30 the next. After school Lance went STRAIGHT to working on his math homework. He's been doing long division, which, I'm embarassed to admit that I don't really remember how to do all the way! I felt really stupid when he was asking me questions! haha. I had to tell him how smart he was and how proud of him he was. I also told him that it's really smart of him to work on his homework right away instead of procrastinating. While he worked on his homework, I worked on making my magnets that I hope to sell on Etsy in the future. These ones were sort of a trial run. The little pictures were really cute but the glass bubbles I bought are not very clear and sort of distort some of the pictures. I found some crystal clear bubbles online so I'm going to have to get my hands on those before I start selling.

Here is Lance hard at work on his math homework and below that is a picture of my magnets! :)

My parents got home at almost midnight on Tuesday night and they looked very happy and very tan! I have only heard about bits and pieces of their trip, and I can't wait to hear more! Overall, Lance was nearly PERFECT and I had a great time hanging out with him. I don't see him very much and it was nice to have a pleasant time with him. I am very proud of him. I am so glad that my parents had a nice break and a truly wonderful vacation. They're both saying that it's by far the best vacation they've been on. And I think Lance's good behavior (and not to mention WEIGHT LOSS!) was really the icing on the cake. On Tuesday after school we went to Safeway and Lance picked out flowers for my mom and we got a jumbo beer for my dad as well as a card for the two of them for their anniversary. Hopefully coming back to that, and the good report that Lance promised, made their anniversary week perfect! :)