Celebrations!!!!

"Let them eat cake!"

OK, first of all, of course, the biggest celebration is that I've finally updated the blog after a month and a half! But besides that, we've got some other events to cover, mostly in fast-forward:

Father's Day:

We barbequed burgers and for dessert we had chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting--delicious! For Mother's Day, our ward gave the ladies 2 chocolate bars, so I was looking forward to Father's Day, where they gave us...NOTHING. LAME! Don't they know that's the only reason I GO to church on Father's Day?!?!?!

Amanda got me a couple CD's (the soundtrack to "Twilight Zone: the Movie" and a CD of music from 50's sci-fi/fantasy movies) and an iTunes gift card. You'll notice that I tend to get a lot of music-related presents--that's really out of necessity. I'm lucky that I have a job where I can listen to my ipod at work, but between 40 hrs a week there and 40-60 minutes of commuting every day, I go through a LOT of music, so it's nice to add to the selection regularly.

Maddy also made me this fun card, with a picture of her "holding" a Tootsie pop:

Maddy's Birthday:



For her birthday dinner she chose spinach and cheese raviolis with Amanda's homemade Alfredo sauce--it was delicious!

She chose to have carrot cake, decorated (by her) to look like the TARDIS from "Doctor Who":



In other words, between the fancy raviolis and carrot cake, my daughter is clearly more upper-class than the rest of her family.

She also got a Dr. Who shirt that says "Trust me, I'm the doctor":



and we also got her a Nook (which Amanda has unofficial part-ownership of). Here's her opening some of her other presents:



Maddy also got contact lenses, and has done a MUCH better job learning to put them in and take them out than I did (and I was in my late 20's when I got mine!)

Bee-cause she turned 12 and bee-came a Beehive in Young Women's, the Beehive President "Bee'd" her room:



She also turned 12 just in time to go to this year's Girl's Camp. She leaves on Tuesday and is very excited to go.

Joel and Abe haven't done anything very interesting that I can think of. Here's a funny picture of Abe:



The 3 older kids were all in swimming lessons last week and this week, though Abe freaked out the first day and refused to continue the lessons.

I took Joel to see "Transformers 3" in 3-D the other day (using free tickets) it was fun--definitely worth the price of my free tickets! I also took Maddy and Joel to see "Super 8" (Amanda and I had already seen it--again, we all used free tickets we got from buying a bunch of cereals) They loved it, but Joel claims it was so scary he almost had a heart attack.

Elliott's been talking a lot more lately. 90% of the time, he's saying "show" or "bubbles." In fact, pretty much all day every day, if the TV is not on, he'll keep repeating "show" and pointing to the TV until we turn it onto a kids show. Raising him to be a proper couch potato, we are. He'll also surprise us every so often with words we didn't know he knew, like "cereal," "strawberry," "peach," or "antidisestablishmentarianism." He also started nursery today, and did pretty well--at least we didn't have to deal with him or any tantrums from him, though the nursery worker had to hold him most of the time.

13th Anniversary:

Of course, today is also our 13th wedding anniversary. We kept things pretty simple again this year--Amanda gave me (big surprise) an iTunes gift card (BTW: she got $5 off when she bought the 2 cards--she's still going strong on the couponing thing!); and I got her a magazine subscription (well, she said "I want this magazine" and I said, "OK get it.") I also got her a shirt that says "Talk Nerdy to Me" and has a picture of a Nerds candy guy on it (technically, she bought it when we were at the mall and I was like, "Well, I WAS going to buy that for you, but you can just buy it now instead.")

For dinner tonight, we made pork egg rolls and beef lo mein--delicious! And for dessert, homemade Cinnabons (that IS where we met, after all!)

Tomorrow is the 4th of July, and we'll celebrate by grilling burgers and eating ice cream and Cinnabons and trying not to die of heat exhaustion.

Speaking of heat exhaustion, I've got a wild story to tell about a recent power outage in our neighborhood--but that'll have to wait 'til next time (expect another blog update in a day or so!)