Birthday Surprise

I wish I could write more than once a month but that seems to be the norm. Sometimes I wonder where the month has gone! This month has been a good one though.

We celebrated moms birthday last weekend (wow, this week flew by). While Mom and Ed were finishing up their two weeks in Florida, Greg and family were driving down from NJ. It was all a surprise, planned for months and carried out perfectly. My mother is a busy lady but the weekend was perfect as they had no plans so were free to enjoy the family.

Friday, before mom and Ed got home, we showed them Pullen Park and the Farmers Market. All the kids did really well while we ate. It helped that they were super hungry and the food came out fast. And hush puppies to munch on while waiting didn't hurt either. That night Uncle Matt came up and we let the kids stay up late for a dance party. I loved that they stayed at our place for lots of time to just be together. We don't always get that on our visits to NY and it's hard to plan when there are kids of various ages involved. (Seriously, getting us all out the door was quite a feat.)

Saturday we had to wait until 12:30 for the guest of honor to arrive. We had Lily open the door for mom where, as mentioned, she stood there in shock and then crumbled into tear of utter joyfulness as she took us all in and realized Ed was in on it too. Just the day before, Mom was sad and missing her grandbabies. Then there was was surrounded by them. (We were so missing Tim and Jen!) We spent the day just hanging out and letting everyone just be. I'm very happy to have the cozy space to be the hostess!

After a taco dinner we watched some videos that the boys and I worked on all year. One was a montage of pictures from moms life. Tim picked a good song and made the room weapy at the first note. The 2nd video was a collection of birthday messages I have been collecting for months. That was really fun and funny - we have some creative people in the family. (I'm creative but I was not one of them. Me and video cameras have a weird relationship.)

Sunday Greg, Danielle, Lily and Julia went to mom and Ed's place for a visit before we met out at Maggiano's for dinner. While Leo and I have been there many times, it was the first time we were all there together since our rehearsal dinner in '07. The kids were pretty good (even though there was little food actually eaten by my boys). We don't go out to eat much because so often we can't enjoy the meal when they are being crazy. But it gets better as they get older. Anyway, we returned to our place for cake and presents. It seemed that the surprises finally came to an end. Mom was thrilled to pieces over the whole weekend. A success!

I hated to see those Keplers leave. I bonded with Julia a little. She is such a cute, content little thing. I was able to feed her a bottle and she fell asleep on me more than once. I'm so happy we got to snuggle. Lily is a pleasure to have around too. Her personality shines through and she and Nathan can really play together now. I made up her own little "bedroom" between the guest room going into the play room. We sectioned off the area with a curtain, put Nathan's old toddler bed in there, hung some things on the wall and end laid down a piece of leftover carpet from the living room. It was the prefect little nook for a perfect little girl.

This week was somewhat quiet compared to the weekend, and a little less fun since we didn't have something so big to look forward to. But it was still good. We watched some friends' kids one night (5 kids running around all at once!). They are good kids and we plan to do a little babysitting swap so Leo and I can get a date night in too. Nathan had asked me "on a date" last week and we finally had the chance to go this week. We went to Brixx for pizza. (He asked for Domino first. Uh, no thank you.) We had a nice time but I'm sure the specialness was somewhat lost on him. Yes, he must have known how cute it was for him to even ask.

Friday is upon us and we have a few things going on here and there. Thanksgiving is upon us and then that Christmas rush. We're looking forward to staying put and enjoying being at home.