It's my birthday and I can cry if I want to...

I had the best birthday ever this year! It all started with the kids waking me up by giving me these cute cards and Jared giving me a new camera! I had been wanting one for a while but couldn't justify getting one when my old one still works okay despite being only 3 megapixels (I know, for a mom with kids and being an obsessive scrapbooker, you'd think I would have upgraded long ago!) Anyway, it was just what I wanted and I had fun all morning trying it out.

After church Jared made an awesome lunch of steak and corn on the cob on the grill and then I got a long nap while Jared made this cake and got things ready for a party in our backyard. Abbie and Leah had fun putting on their aprons and "helping" make the cake!

We had blown up a bunch of balloons, which Leah loved, but when we took them outside for the party they all popped on the grass before anyone could play with them.


In the evening we had some friends come over for cake and ice cream (which was delicious, thank you, Jared) and we let the kids run around in the backyard. I think Abbie was more excited about the cake (with 30 candles!) than I was.


After eating, we made everyone come inside and tortured them with some old family movies before we let them leave! It was great! After cleaning everything up, getting the kids in bed, and finally winding down for the day, Jared pulled out one last gift:

A new laptop! The "HP - Pavilion Laptop with AMD Turion™ X2 Dual-Core Mobile Processor TL-60". I don't know what that means, just that it has enough memory to store all my pictures and music, do wireless internet, record and play DVD's, run games, and more. I couldn't believe it, we had talked about getting one sometime soon since our old desktop is ancient and is always having problems. But I didn't think Jared would do all the research, find a good deal, and surprise me with it! So it was a great way to end a perfect day but now I need to find some time to play with my new toy!