Happy Birthday, dear Meeeee-eeeee!

Holy Crap. Another year come and gone.

My mother is not exactly sure of the time of my actual birth. I am the youngest of five, which is I guess an excuse of sorts for the lack of memory, baby book, and dearth of baby pictures of yours truly. One of the times I asked her to recall the time of my birth she said she remembers eating lunch at the hospital. Ummm, ok. Since I was an induced birth (fifth child, end of summer, not yet even due until early September but feeling every ounce of my 7.5# self weighing heavily on her bladder and pelvic cavity...can you blame her?) I would guess that she is probably right on the money with that memory. She probably arrived at the hospital for an induction in the early or mid-morning hours and due to the fact that I had four siblings who had paved the way nicely for me I probably shot out like a cannon well before lunchtime. But, regardless of my acutal time of birth (assuming, for the sake of argument that it really was late morning-ish), I think I'll just claim ignorance and say that I'm still 35 right until 11:59pm. I will wait until then to start admitting that I'm 36. Just call it a gift I'm giving myself, alright?

Shut up.

Acutally, 36 doesn't really feel all that different from 35. Except for the fact that on my 35th birthday I was 7.5 months pregnant with baby #3 and feeling a whole lot more tired, irritable, and bloated than I am this year. So, in many ways my own personal 36th feels a damn sight better than my 35th...even if I am still pretty tired one year later - now I'm getting up to soothe and nurse the baby not because that same baby's head is compressing my bladder into the size of half a lima bean. (Note to self/personal mantra: this too shall pass)

As birthdays go this was a very nice one. In fact, it lasted Saturday afternoon through Monday evening. I'm all about stretching out any celebration as long as possible so this was a good thing. Saturday night Rick and I had a wonderful date night and much to our collective relief the girls were perfect angels for my in-laws. Even Miss E (aka Miss-I-won't-sleep-without-mommy-in-the-room) went to sleep nicely...go figure! Sunday, after Rick made us all a yummy breakfast of waffles and sausages, I took the girls to church. Then in the afternoon the in-laws came over and stayed for my birthday dinner. When the girls were with my in-laws on Saturday night they made me a wonderfully silly cake. There is a family tradition (started by Rick's corny dad) whereby the home-baked cake is colored in unusual ways which is not discovered by the recipient until they cut into the cake. This tradition was in place when I first joined the family in their birthday celebrations but in the past few years it kind of fell to the wayside for a number of reasons (in part, because we've been too busy to bake and thus store-bought cakes have reigned for quite a while now). At my father-in-law's birthday dinner this year I made him a cake and the girls and I secretly colored it bright blue - much to his delight when he cut into it. And so the tradition was begun anew - my cake this year was a lovely shade of green with white icing and pink lettering. A very preppy cake indeed!

My multitude of gifts were also pretty wonderful this year. Rick ordered a miniature MP3 player for me but unfortunately it has not yet arrived from Office Depot - hopefully it will arrive soon, but in the meantime he gave me a picture of what it looks like! It's very small and if the printout is correct it is also blue...my favorite color. I plan to use it when I go on my morning walks solo -- which is not often but when I do have to walk alone it gets rather boring rather fast. So, the music will hopefully keep me moving and keep my mind off how far I've walked. Rick's parents got me a gift card to Target, a bunch of organizational supplies like post-its, funky colored paper clips, etc. (Yes, I'll admit it...I'm an organizational-store-junkie...I love to wander the aisles of Staples and look at all the neat new folders, bins, packages of pens, labels, staplers, and cool stuff like that) , AND a gift certificate to my favorite quilt shop. The sad part was my
mother-in-law found out that the local quilt shop (that I haven't had time to frequent in FOREVER) is closing in December. Ack! I'm crushed! I will have to go and use my gift certificate pronto for certain things that I want for A's quilt and then save some of the remainder for their big 'going out of business' sale!!! The girls got me some sewing bins to organize my spools of thread and supplies in my new sewing area (I gave Rick this idea the other day - see? I told you I was an organizational-junkie!) and a couple of new fabrics for my stash. And that's not all - I also got a check for $50 in the mail from my mom - yay, more spending money...and cash, no less! Am I a lucky birthday girl, or what? Time to go shopping!

Today, my actual birthday, Rick stayed home from work and we took the girls to the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. We had never been but it's one of the museums that participates in the reciprocal program of the ASTC and we'd heard good things about it from a friend who also has young children. The museum is small but has some interesting and kid-friendly exhibits. I think it took us about an hour and a half to get through the majority of stuff that was interesting to the girls. The bug/art exhibit (Bug Out of the Box: Contemporary Art, History, and Science of Bugs) was big hit as were the miniature animal dioramas, the small basement aquarium, and the "Dinosaur Dig" but we unfortunately ended up skipping the art and sculpture galleries due to lack of interest in the under 5-foot-tall set. Ah well - maybe next time.

And this evening Rick and I rounded off the celebrations with another slice of birthday cake with a cup of tea while we watched another movie. Call me a sucker for the occasional horror flick but I just decided that of all the choices I had I wanted to watch Alien-Resurrection. I had actually never seen it before - we just threw it on our Netflix list and up it came this week. It wasn't great, but it certainly wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen.

So, that wraps up my weekend of celebrations. Time to head to bed and hope that E gives me one last present - the gift of sleep!

Nighty-night!