Happy.....Uh....

We tried our darndest to celebrate Brandon's birthday this week. He was in Pinedale for work, so it was a bit tricky. But, we love the guy so despite bad weather forecasts, I loaded up all five kids in the car complete with birthday paraphernalia ready to party our pants off on behalf of our favorite man. Sadly, the forecasts were right. We ended up in some bad weather over the mountain pass and a drive that should have taken us about 4 hours took us 6. Don't worry too much about my judgement here; if the weather had been SO bad I would have just stayed home. But it was passable. Not fun - but passable. So I just slowed way down and plow through the snow we did. The real bummer about this - besides the fact that 4 hours of car torment was turned into 6 and my poor carsick Andrew barfed not 1 but 4 times - Daddy beat us to the hotel room that evening. No surprising him now. But we were together. We enjoyed some pizza and a movie and one another's company.

But the next day I thought here's my chance! He'll really be surprised now! It's not even his birthday. So during our break for freedom from the hotel room at lunch (did I mention the high in Pinedale was still below freezing?) we stopped by the grocery store for a cake, candles and the best darn birthday dinner on record. Microwave dinners. Oh, it was so pathetic. But I knew after a long day the last thing my man was going to want to do was venture out in the cold again. By the way....I'm guessing there aren't many vegetarians in Pinedale? (Not that many vegetarians eat microwave dinners on a regular basis, but I have seen them around.) There were like two options. Yech. My sweet little Parker, always the food optimist kept telling me how delicious it was and thanks for making such a yummy dinner. ;) Anyway, so with food supplies on hand we headed back to the hotel room to create the party atmosphere.

Wiola:

Here's where you all get to REALLY laugh at my pathetic-ness. Notice my birthday sign? Minus the birthday part? Yeah. Totally forgot to check that before we left. "Happy....er....uh...." well, I guess the actual birthday part was over with anyway.

The kids at least had made Dad some cute birthday cards.

And then thanks to my view of the parking lot, we decided to hide when we knew Dad was coming. Parker behind the chair:

Drew under the covers,

Paige and I, (thumbs up!) on the other side of the bed,

and even Emma, poking out from under the bedskirt.

Claire just sat on the bed and laughed at us all like we were crazy pants. We all yelled "Surprise!" when Dad came in and then enjoyed our tasty microwave meals, washed down with a chocolate oreo cake, (the saving grace of the party - even with un-lit candles) and enjoyed a birthday swim at the pool before bed.

It was the most UNglamorous birthday on record. But we worked with what we had. As meager as our birthday offerings were, we wanted so badly to do something to show our Daddy how much we love and appreciate all that he does for us. He has so much on his plate supporting us, let alone everything else he has going on. But he does it willingly and happily. On top of it all, he's always willing to give more of his time snuggling up to a great chick flick with me, reading with the boys, being a jungle gym for the girls, and baby-talking with Emma. He's a great husband and a great father and we love him so much!

By the way, at the risk of getting in trouble for it later, I'm going to let you all know this was the big three-oh for Brandon. Pretty, cool huh?

Completely un-birthday related: Claire said some new words while we were there. Which is pretty huge considering all she says so far is "Mama" and "Dada". Her new words are "Ba-ba" (for the bottle of course) and "A-dew". How lucky is Drew that his is the first name she says?!

Also, some fun things to remember from the drive home. Parker, during a very serious discussion about his future "special lady" asked me, "Mom, how am I going to find a special lady when I'm a grown up man?" I replied that I didn't know exactly how he would find her, but that he didn't need to worry. He said to me, "But I know she's out there somewhere and I just don't know where!" So cute!!! I love my serious little man. I just know someday he's going to make some "special lady" VERY happy.

Back to the drive; when we crossed the state line, I yelled out "Wahoo! We're in Utah! Bye-bye Wyoming, hello Utah!" Paige shouted out, "Hello ee-haw!" then after a pause, "Mom! Ee-haw's not talking back!" So I guess I have to take back what I said earlier. It's not always a torment to be in the car with my kids. In fact sometimes I rather enjoy it. Due to Andrew's motion sickness, we can't do the movie thing. It leaves us a lot of time to really talk and connect. We sing, we listen to books on tape, the kids snooze a bit, but mostly we laugh and talk together and I get a sneak peek at what's going on in those precious little brains when there is not much going on around them. Oh how I love them!!