Dad turns 29.

And like a good wife, I finally listened to the man when he says "when are you going to make meeee a quilt?" And decided to sit down and make an awesome quilt for his birthday.

And went to the fabric store, took advantage of the 33% off sale, and bought yards upon yards and it was (is?) going to be awesome.

And naturally, I only have one (ONE!) block done and now it's for Christmas. And because I cannot keep secrets very well, he found out about it pretty early on, and as his midnight birthday gift, saw it, well, or saw the fabric, hahaha.  So now I don't have the excuse "I can't work on it when you're here!" So.  Christmas it is.  Maybe I'll be awesome and finish it for Father's Day. But probably not.  The first quilt I ever made, back when I was merely 7, is still in the hoop, in the closet.  We're going on 15 years! "It's like the gift that keeps on giving!" Mike says that's a calendar, not a quilt that never gets finished.

Anyway, so Mitchell is SO excited for *his* birthday, in July.  He even knows it's in July, but since he doesn't really know when July is, he just keeps a running list of the birthdays ahead of his.  "Dads, then grandpa, then Aunt Amy's, then Aunt Madee, then papa,  then MINNNNNNEEEE, then GRAAAANNNDMASSSS, then yous mom."

Picture by Mitchell, himself.

And I'm not kidding. He lists them all in order everytime.

So when Dad's birthday was tomorrow, he could hardly stand it.  That's all he could talk about the entire week.

Since Mike's car has issues of some sort every other day (or so it seems.) he took my car to work the day before his birthday.  And since up until the week before I was, truly, trying (er...hoping) to get his quilt done in then, I didn't really get him anything. So when Mike came home from work, Mitchell and I took off to the store.

Mitchell, and I should have taken a picture, flaunted some jeans, a polo, a zipped jacked on upside down, some sunglasses on, also, upside down, shoes on the wrong feet, without socks (I cannot get him to wear socks. gross, but I choose to fight other battles.  Like the 'go to bed stop playing with your tinker toys' battle).  And every.single.person he would walk past, he would say, in his most serious voice, "it's my dad's birthday tomorrow"  over and over, I could not stop laughing.

And we picked out some new pants, and Mitchell insisted he hold them, and when they got too heavy, he politely demanded a cart.

He was planning dad's birthday for the whole week.  I asked him, "what do you want to get dad for his birthday?" mitchell said, "hot wheels"

sweet.  So at target, "do you still want to get dad some hot wheels?" "yes." and he picked out a nice green car for dad.  It must have been a pretty intense decision because he carefully examined about 10 hot wheels cars.

And when we walked past the footballs, he exclaimed, "MOM! THAT"S DAD'S FAVORITE!"

indeed it is.  should we get him this one?

but Mitchell insisted we get dad the 3+ up size, in red, as oppose to the full size.  Which I figured would be great, since we were looking for that exact size around for Mitchell, last Christmas.

Fun.

And birthday's are never really birthdays unless we get some balloons from the party store.  Red and grey for ohio state.  I did have to convince mitchell that direction, since he was insisting on the bright pink and orange.

And while they were filling the balloons, Mitchell found some party hats, nad some car stickers, nad he was just being so adorable I said yes.  And we all wore hats the entire birthday day! Even though dad was at work.

We took Dad to lunch, and then came home and baked a cake.  A nice, triple layer, chocolate cake.  And it was sinking and was a different texture than normal, when it came out of the oven.  Which was strange, because, I kid you not, I have perfected this cake.

And so I figured it was going to be fine, and made the frosting, and *tasted* the frosting and almost gagged at the sweetness.  This is not dark chocolate, I thought.  So I added some more cocoa, and then some more, and finally,  I just added the entire container of cocoa.  Which I was annoyed because I bought the giradelli brand, trying to make the tastiest cake ever.

And after adding 3x the amount of cocoa to the frosting, and it still tasting way too sweet, the corner of my eye caught the "cocoa" container, which actually read, "powdered chocolate" and after further examination, it also reads "to use as unsweetened cocoa, decrease sugar by 1/2 cup, every 1/2 cup" or soemthing.  Essentially, there is twice as much sugar in both the cake, and the frosting, and I tried the cake, and no.

Harmons it is!

"it's my dad's birthday" says mitchell to everyone and anyone.  while wearing a pointed party hat.  I had cocoa powder  powdered chocolate all over my shirt that I didn't notice till I got home. Such a sight to see!

15 dollars later plus some ice cream.  And mine would have tasted better DANG IT.

I'm like the master of screwing up birthdays. At least I didn't screw up the pasta and sauce out of a can.

But Mike's clothes fit, and he loves his hot wheels car, and the football, and mitchell knows how to throw it properly now, and catch it, and Mike couldn't be more pleased.

We also made dad a biiiig birthday sign and hung it up on the wall.  Mitchell traced his hands, and feet, then placed his head face down and said "trace my head, mom" oh. awesome.  I will do just that.

And I've decided it's time to get fit again, so I dusted off the p90x and am so so so sore I feel like crying.  I've also decided to diet, so when I feel like eating a doughnut, I break out the cottage cheese and strawberries and silently cry.  It's the worst thing ever! The only thing that makes this whole "healthy" thing tolerable is my children work out with me. When I get my tennis shoes on, mitchell puts on his boots.  We stretch and do jumping jacks together, and Mitchell takes it so seriously.  Ali thinks it's hilarious and tries to jump on us, or just tries to do what we're doing and laughs hysterically like it's the funniest thing ever.  I guess it might be.  I'm so lucky my children are entertained by work out cds.  And now every morning, Mitchell comes in, rubs my back, and whispers in my ear "mom, mom, wake up, it's time to exercise" that would get anybody out of bed and in tennis shoes and in the front room looking like an idiot.  At least we have blinds!

You know who doesn't care about me trying to be healthy? Ali.  She's started grabbing fruit snacks two at a time (just like Mitchell does) toddles one over to Mitchell  (I have absolutely no idea why my children are so nice to each other), and then toddles over to me to open it for her.  And then shoves one in my mouth (pretty sure Mike trained her to do that.)

And then one of my darling children, I've decided it was probably Ali, threw or dropped my laptop, my airmac *sob*, on the ground.  And while the best buy said you could throw it off a 3 story building, and only the screen would break, he obviously meant to add, if you throw it 2 feet and onto a hard metal chair leg, the screen will absolutely break.  And thus, my husband was so wise in buying the accidental coverage and now mitchell thinks it's at the hospital, since I couldn't describe best buy another way.  "yous computer broken? It's at the hospital?" uh, did I tell you that? I was so mad I was seeing red.  Mike says, "you didn't yell at them?"  I couldn't find my voice! I just threw them in the car and went right over to best buy! and then to my mothers while it all processed. lovely, right? All this while I was in the shower! Why does showering have to be so dangerous? they had balloons and beauty and the beast to keep them entertained for 10 mins.  my goodness.

So, thankfully, I'll have my computer may 17th.  Or so they say.  Shop hop is the beginning of June, and I'm so tired of having computer problems EVERY YEAR! It's like the universe is against us.  Luckily, Mike's been so kind to let me borrow his computer, and does not get mad when I download the free illustrator trial, or a bunch of free fonts, just so  I can work.  And he let me use it all weekend, and I'm really thankful for that.  And extra thankful he bought the accidental coverage I would have probably talked him out of if I had been there.

So there's the bad news and the birthday news, and the good news is we should be hopefully moving this weekend! We're trying to close on a house, but I'm being careful about being too excited because we've had a lot of weird things happen in the past 6 months, in regard to buying a house anyway.

Happy 29th (or is it 30? haha) to my sweet husband!