He Beat Me Again...

Spencer doesn't actually beat me in the wife-beating sense.  I just mean that every year I fail at making his birthday special, and he manages to make mine excede all my wild expectations (and I do have wild expectations for my birthdays).

Spencer's birthday was on a monday, in my defense, only a week after starting a new job, and only three weeks after moving, so naturally every moment up to that day I had been spending unpacking and doing the general business of getting settled into a place.  Now that I've excused myself...

Luckily, Cadence is at the perfect age to make any birthday exciting.  She was all for spending the entire day in preparation for birthday celebrations.

We decorated the patio.

We decorated the breakfast nook.

We made paintings and drawings and cards.

We decorated "gift boxes" for all the little gifts I could find at Walmart.

Since we didn't really have much by way of friends at that point, we just had a party unto ourselves, which is quite uncharacteristic for us, you may know.  So I tried to make it cool.  I made (quite yummy) hamburgers for dinner, and then sent them all out to run in the sprinklers while I set up for the final activity before cake presents, roasting marshmallows in the fire pit (actually on the fire pit with our camping grill, since I forgot to buy charcoals--lam-ish, I know).

And all the praise and thanks and love that Spencer's birthday letter would have included will be alluded to in my birthday summation, so let's just move right on to that!

My birthday, unlike Spencer's lameness, was on a Saturday of a 4-day weekend.  And if you know me, you know my birthday lasts for at least two weeks.  The week before and the week following.  And longer, if I want.  I tried to throw myself a totally awesome party that I was sure the whole of Northwest Arkansas and maybe into Missouri and OK would want to come to, but I made the mistake of having my birthday on the first day of BYU football.  Obviously, we had to reschedule.  The next Saturday had a game that ended earlier, so we postponed.

So Spencer and the girls dedicated the entire weekend to me.  Saturday after I slept in we went to "War Eagle Cavern", where we saw an old-fashioned working flour mill and then went to see the cave and mine for gems.  Oh yeah, we got some, alright.  It was so exciting for the kids.  We had a lot of fun and it tuckered the kids (and Spencer and I) right out.

That night I got to choose exactly how to spend our time, so I chose to go to the place where a mom can be a mom... Chuck E Cheese!  The kids thought this was a necessary ingredient to birthday celebrations, and what better way to spend my birthday than to see my kids having fun?  Spencer made (bought) me a beautiful and delicious Red Velvet Cake and we laughed at how much smoke that big collection of candles had made--probably more candles than any one cake at Chuck E Cheese had ever had...

Once we got home we picked up a sitter and Spencer and I were off on a date.  We had a great time seeing a movie that was refreshingly different though not necessarily one I would recommend to just anybody (Scott Pilgrim Vs the World).  We sure did have a good time together, though.

Monday (labor day) was my second birthday, and I told him that all I wanted was to have the whole day to accomplish all my to-do's.  He took the kids to the lake, he took them out and played soccer, he fed them, bathed them.  Then we all went to a matinee.

What a perfect weekend!

And then the next Saturday we had my party.  It rocked.  We rocked.  I try to be careful of posting about acitivities that may seem to exclude others, but I think there is only one friend who reads my blog from Arkansas, and she was there.   Here you go, a taste of the awesomeness:

Spencer put a lot of thought into my presents, into the planning and execution of my birthday(s).  As he always does.  He knows just how to make me feel special and loved and appreciated.  Time and money are two things that he is acutely aware of in the way he spends them.  But for me, he has all the time (and to a more limited degree, money) in the world.  Next year, you're going to get a sound beating--in the birthday sense--my love.