Happy Birthday to Me

My birthday blog post disappeared, so I have to rewrite the whole thing--ugh!

My morning started perfectly with Eric coming into my room to give me a hug and to wish me a "Happy Birthday". That boy gives the best hugs! Natalie and Alex also gave me birthday wishes and hugs later as well. Patrick may have reminded them, but it's nicer to think that they wanted to give me a birthday greeting on their own. Anthony actually forgot until the next day, but I had expected that to be the case since he was in the middle of final exams. He is coming home tonight!!!

Patrick let me stay home while he took Alex to school. We usually go together and then go straight to the gym to exercise. I decided that I would rather go to breakfast at Magnolia Pancake Haus instead of going to lunch somewhere, even though that meant missing out on exercising. Grandma and Grandpa met us at our house, and we were at breakfast by around 9:30am. Natalie seemed a little sad when she found out that she would not see Grandma and Grandpa that day, since they were just having breakfast with us and then going home. She seemed happy that she has "seen them more in the last month than in the last year."

Patrick and I didn't even plan on having lunch because we anticipated being very full after breakfast. By about 2pm, we decided to pick up some fried pork dumpling appetizers at the PF Chang's at La Cantera Mall. We had to get Barnes and Noble gift cards for a couple of Eric's teachers anyway, so it was a good excuse to go.

The rest of the day I got to do some scrapbooking/crafting. It felt great to play with paper and glue for the first time in a year or so. I haven't scrapbooked regularly for probably two years or more, and I'm a little rusty, so I got a December Daily kit this year to give me a starting off point. I'll hopefully be able to share some pages when I actually complete them. I sent some photos/pages to Costco, but they are busy with Christmas card orders this time of year, so I had to wait more than the usual one day to get them printed.

I continued the crafting the next day, Friday, by packaging up gifts for Eric's teachers. Our kids have way too many teachers combined to get anything big for anyone, but we did get those Barnes and Noble gift cards for Eric's homeroom teacher and GT teacher along with our usual gift, Ghirardelli Peppermint Bark candies. Natalie didn't feel especially close to any of her teachers, so they all just got the candy and no gift cards. She also gave out candy canes to her classmates. Alex wanted Terry's Chocolate Oranges to give out instead. Neither Natalie nor Alex wanted their teacher gifts wrapped, so I was off the hook with those.

Patrick grilled some salmon that night for dinner. Alex stayed after school to help a friend with math. Natalie had some basketball games to attend as the team manager, so we couldn't go out to eat, in fact, it was almost 8pm by the time Natalie got home and got to eat some salmon. Patrick was very good about spoiling me on my birthday.

So that was my low-key birthday. We're planning on having a birthday dinner tomorrow with the grandparents and with Anthony. I'm sure I'll have more photos to share then.