Birthday Re-Cap...

Can I begin with "I don't know where to even begin"??

Oh my goodness....

First off, I just need to say that I have never felt more loved in my life than in the past 3 days. I've thought a lot about what to write here today, but words cannot begin to express how awesome this past weekend was.

Lori being here was incredible. From the moment she stepped into Bush Intercontinental till the moment I dropped her off at departures - we tore up Houston. :) We crammed more into 3 days than an ordinary person would think was even remotely possible!! Not only did we do a lot, we had a blast!! And we recorded almost every moment on camera!! Right before I left for the airport I read a post on Ali Edwards blog about capturing an entire weekend. I thought that was such a good idea, so I literally toted one or two cameras every where we went!! I took way more pictures than I can share here, but I'll put some good effort into it! :)


Friday
So, on Friday we left the airport and stopped for CFA. Right then and there we decided that sharing meals was going to be our thing, to cut down on costs and to avoid tummy overload. :) That proved to be a great plan!! After lunch we went to Jennifer's for an afternoon of hair makeover for Lori. She was still working on a prom updo so we hit Scrapbook Emporium right next door. Found several fun things in there! Then we spent a few hours with Jennifer (who's awesome, I might add!) getting highlights and cut. Jennifer and Lori totally hit it off, which proved to be very helpful later in the weekend! (I knew they would - there was just too much awesomeness in the room!) I do think that Jennifer was a little scared because I was soooo hyper and I'm not sure if she's ever seen me quite like that. Maybe with Kimmie here, I get pretty hyper when Kimmie is here! :) So we finished with hair (which looks amazing!) and left for By Design, pausing at Panera Bread to split a sandwich. (mmmm, bacon turkey bravo). For the record, we did a lot of eating this weekend - but not over eating because of the splitting thing. It was kind of genius! Lori loved the store, all the pink, we totally took a bunch of pictures. We sat down to scrap at 8 and worked about 10 minutes and decided to call it a night. :) We both had been too excited to sleep the night before and had been up way too early!! So we left By Design and went to Scrapbook Junkie - found a few more fun things there. Then Rob was really surprised when we showed up at home at 10pm, we were scheduled to be out till 1am!! So we put on jammies and scrapped in the living room for an hour or so and then called it a night...

Saturday
My kids (bless their little hearts) seriously got up at 6am. I'm still not sure what that was about, but it was the beginning of a trend. There was not one night this weekend that we slept more than 6 hours! We decided, well, we are up, so we might as well head out to IKEA. Lori had never been and we toured every nook and cranny of the store!! I totally got a ton of fun ideas for my house, so it was very inspirational!! And we took more pictures. :) Then we decided to try out Memorial City Mall. Oh my Mall!! It was AWESOME. We are so totally taking the kids there some time over the summer, they have the coolest play place I have ever seen in a mall!! no exageration there, I promise. We hit Penney's, Macy's, Charlotte Russe, New York and Co (I had an additional 30% off total sale coupon) Express, Old Navy and Target. It was way cool!! In all, we walked 8 hours that day, needless to say we were pretty wiped when we got home at 5:30. Upon arrival, Rob threw steaks on the grill (expensive ones that were about to expire = cheap) and we sauted some mushrooms, threw crescents in the oven and whipped up a Moonlight Salad. Wow. Dinner was sooooo good. Topped off with some Kitchen Sink Bars. incredible. About 8:30 we got a sudden urge to check out Michael's and found some steals there right before they closed. Then we finally got to scrapbooking about 9:30 or 10 and worked about 2 hours before bed. Unfortunately, that was the extent of our scrapbooking, but it was cool because we got to do so much more in the way of other things. :)

Sunday
Again, an early start. Had to be responsible this day (boo!) and teach Sunday School and be at service. I really enjoyed documenting the baptism, that's always a neat experience. I got to wear an awesome new outfit that I had bought the day before. I think I forgot to mention that our little shopping trip was extremely productive!! Lori loved our church and everyone was very gracious to her.
After service we waited in Rob's office for a bit and then Monique came and got our children so we could have some grown up time with Rob. After much debate (you don't even want to know how much) we settled on Carraba's (mmmmmm) for lunch and Lori and I split the manicotti. yum. Then we fought our way through traffic down to Galveston and played on the beach for an hour. It was a perfect day, perfect weather and so beautiful. I hadn't been down there since Ike, so it was cool to see what is still there. We started back home about 4:30 but Rob just seemed to be dragging his feet. Of course, I'm freaking out because at 6 we have life groups and I knew we were going to be late. It just seemed to take forever to get home!
Finally we got there a few minutes after 6 and there weren't any cars but Kevin's, and he wasn't in it! Lori loaded me down with our stuff from the car and I walk in the door to a living room FULL of people and streamers and yelling "Happy Birthday!". It was amazing, I promise. I was completley clueless. A bunch of our students were there, and some of our parents from church, and Jennifer and Bart and their kids. And of course, Lori. I nearly started crying several times, in fact I'm blinking back tears just typing it! It was soooo cool. Monique and Jennifer and one of the other moms had coordinated all the food and snuck a house key from Rob and even snuck one of my scrapbook pages out of the house to make a cake with my page!! It was beautiful. That part really got me. And we took tons of pictures and it was just a perfect, perfect birthday!! They provided all the food and even cleaned up when they were done. There are little '30' stickers all over my house now, on my peanut butter and on the mirrors, even on utensils in the kitchen drawers. Every time I turn around I see them, and it reminds me not how old I am, but how loved I am. :) Just for being me. That was the best part.
Everyone stuck around till about 8:30 or 9. Jennifer gave me the gift of joining Facebook for my birthday (along with the awesome cake AND an iTunes gift card) so that's going to be really cool. Lori gave me a new pair of pink Converse - oh yeah, I'm going to ROCK those! And Monique gave me a beautiful silver eiffel tower for my charm bracelet. Rob and the kids gave me a new (much needed) new purse. Kim sent me an amazing set of bird stamps in the mail, I can't wait to play with them!!
After everyone left and we fought Sarah into bed, I burned a disc of all our adventures and then Rob and Lori and I sat in the living room and discussed life and ministry and love and marriage and everything in between. That part was really incredible too! We stayed up till almost midnight again, it was just too hard to stop talking. I can't believe how long we have all been friends and I am the most blessed woman ever!

So, I want to thank all of my friends for the cards, the gifts, the party, and most of all - the love that was so extravagantly displayed this weekend. I really want to thank Rob as well. You would not believe how loving, generous, and supportive he has been this weekend, so helpful with the kids and just wanted me to really enjoy this time. Lori kept joking that 'He really raised the bar" and I totally have to agree. I kept thanking him for his awesomeness, but I'm planning a special thank you. :)

I haven't even READ my facebook page yet, I wanted to document all this before I lost any tiny bit of it. I cannot believe the life I have and each of you are so precious to me, whether you were here (having a college weekend) with me or sent me stamps in the mail or even typed 'happy birthday' on my wall. I have had 30 years of wonderful and for that I am truly thankful!!


PS - I have to run to staff meeting, but I will come back and post pictures very soon!