Queen for a Day

This has been a really mixed-emotion weekend.  We attended a beautiful funeral for a dear girl in our ward today - Chloe Mohun.  Funerals have been an overarching theme of my 2011 experience, and each one brings the same mixture of gratitude, sorrow, fear, hope, love, desire to serve and lift and create days free of any regrets just in case -- a lot of emotions, really!

Second of all, today is my birthday.

My dear friend Emily sent me a gift card from Fandango for my birthday (movie theaters, if you are clueless like me and wondering what Fandango is).  So we took the kids to Cars 2 yesterday.  It was their first time in a movie theater.  We had a couple of meltdowns/tantrums when the popcorn made us all really thirsty and we were trying to be cheap and not buy a drink to go along with it.  But we made it through them and mostly it was just really fun!  Abby stood through almost all of it, shouting, "Yay, you did it!" when the 'good' cars got away from the 'bad' cars.  She and Brianna danced to all the music.  And Abby would randomly yell out, "This is fun, Mom!" or "Woo-hoo!  Good job!" and other encouraging bursts of two-year-old enthusiasm aimed at the characters on the screen.  Isaac mostly just sat, mesmerized by it all.  But then he spent the entire evening with his red toy car - which suddenly took on the name "Qween" - running away from the school bus and fire engine and ambulance and always victorious!  In fact, I am sure he'll be inseparably connected to that little red race car for a long time!

My mom sent me the cutest apple-themed Chore Chart with our pictures in small frames that hang below each person's list of chores to do.  She spent a lot of time on it, and it really is so worth it!!!

And Dave treated me to a day filled with everything special for me!  He went shopping this morning and bought two doughnuts to share with the kids and was good enough to NOT buy me one!  Instead, he got me a small bag of my favorite sugar-free cinnamon bears from the bulk section at WinCo!  They were fresh, too!  YUM!  Other food favorites that he splurged on for my birthday included ham steak - grilled on the grill outside, baked sweet potatoes, our first watermelon in a year, and some sugar-free ice cream and diet A&W Root Beer for root beer floats!  Top it off with my "cake" this year - a mostly-sugar-free mixed berry, jello, pudding, angel food cake trifle - and it was pretty much the perfect day!!!  Although we actually haven't eaten the watermelon or cake yet -- but it's a holiday weekend, so there's plenty of time to get around to all of that!  We are also splurging for the 4th of July and having corn on the cob!!!  I'm really excited!


More than anything, though - Dave just did a million small things today to make it special!  He even wrote this on my Facebook wall: "Happy birthday to the most awesome mother, coolest wife, most attractive English major, most deadly secret government agent and all around best person in the world!"  In case you were wondering, this was my reply, "Thanks Dave! I definitely couldn't do any of it without you . . . especially the secret government agent part. They would have found out a long time ago that my i.d. was fake and I have no idea how to use a gun if it weren't for your dashing good looks and smooth tongue that are always distracting them! I love you! Thanks for making it the best birthday and . . . every day . . . ever! I know, I know . . . you put up with a lot! ;-D"

I felt like a Queen today!  And if that is what it means to be 31 -- er -- 29 again -- then WELCOME, WELCOME!!!

I also got to have a couple of really good conversations with my brother and sister, and that always makes me feel good to know I have people who love me!  Perhaps particularly in lieu of the funeral today, that is THE most important gift I think you could get for your birthday!