Peter Piper

Monday night we went to Peter Piper to celebrate Jamie's and his brother-in-law Zane's birthdays with the Espersons. The kids had lots of fun. Wac-a-mole is the recurring favorite. We had a fun time. Happy birthday guys!

Going for a Ride

Guess who's 39

Jamie's birthday was yesterday. We didn't do anything too exciting. I let the kids go the dollar store and each pick out a balloon to take to him at work but when we got there he didn't have his phone on him, and we couldn't get a hold of him. But this is what he would have gotten.

Here are his balloons and his presents waiting for him when he got home. I let Emmy and T.J. each pick out a roll of wrapping paper and a balloon. Do you see any themes? Emmy wants everything to be princess and T.J. loves the color yellow.

Notice the cake. It is a German chocolate cake made from scratch which is Jamie's favorite. It is supposed to be 3 pretty good sized layers but I made a few cupcakes and then when I went to put the other 2 layers in the oven, Addy reached for the oven. When I grabbed her to keep her from burning herself, this is what happened. So the cake was a little on the wimpy side.

Here are the kids helping him open his presents and blow out his candles. He did get dinner at Joe's barbecue, so I don't think the day was a total loss.

Happy Birthday! We love you.

Our Little Miracle

How many times are our lives blessed and we push it off as a coincidence or luck or something else? I have debated posting this because it is so trivial and yet to me and Jamie it was kind of a big deal. We have been working on our garden and we wanted some more dirt to put on it. A few houses down they are putting in a swimming pool. So I asked them to dump 2/3 of a load on our driveway. So this is what we started with.

So the first day, I shoveled a few wheelbarrow fulls while Jamie was at work, and then the next few mornings we both got up early before the kids got up and worked on it and so then we decided we wanted it gone by the weekend. I asked Jamie when he woke up what he wanted to get done on Saturday. He said, I would consider it a very productive day if we got rid of all of that dirt. So we worked really hard that day, Jamie a lot harder than me because I got to take breaks to watch the kids. Here are my two men at work when it was still early and we were all still smiling.

And my girls enjoying watching the boys work.

So anyways, we fill the garden, fill all the holes in our yard, put dirt everywhere we could possibly ever need it and we aren't even close to having it gone. So we put an ad on craigslist and Jamie borrows his dads truck to go haul the rest to our rental. So he makes the first load to the rental, comes back, we fill the truck up again, he goes back over to the rental to unload and the wheelbarrow has a flat. By this time, it is about 7 at night, it is getting dark, and we are both worn out and tired. So he unloads the truck with a flat tire on the wheelbarrow. So he comes back, we load the truck again and he takes a load over to his dad's because he needs to return the truck. So by the time him and his dad unload that load, he washes out the truck and gets home, it is like 10:00 on Saturday night. We still have quite a bit of dirt in our drive way and Jamie has a 6 am meeting on Sunday morning. So I am walking back into the house Saturday night after watching him drive away to take the truck back to his dad and I'm thinking to myself, I don't know if this is too trivial to pray for but we have worked really hard and we need the rest of that dirt gone. So Sunday Jamie gets up and goes to his meeting at 6 and the dirt is still in our driveway, he comes home at 7:30 and the dirt is all gone. We had put a sign out that said free dirt and our neighbor down the street had taken it. He said, "I hope you don't mind that I took the rest of it." We both felt like it was a little miracle.

Growing Up

Addy started feeding herself. She actually does pretty well with it. She also can tell you what a kitty-kat and a monkey say. So that was all good until she started opening doors today. It has been so nice to be able to shut the door and keep her out of stuff, but that all changed today.

Our Posse

While Jamie was off he decided that he wanted to go to the Gilbert Historical Museum. I was a little bit skeptical when he said he wanted to go, but it was actually really interesting and the kids enjoyed it.

"Labor" Day

Jamie took Friday and Tuesday off to go along with Labor Day. It was nice to have him home for a few days. Jamie hasn't hardly taken any time off since he started his new job, so we decided we would just hang out at home and get some stuff done. So he went to work on our garden. Emmy decided she would help him dig the trench for the sprinklers.

Here he is laying the pipework.

I don't know how he worked in the heat as long as he did. It is miserable.