Thursday, November 5, 2009

Fred's 28th Birthday


WOW! Am I a lame blogger or what?! I'm just really finding it hard to find time to blog. We've been up to a lot in the last month, but you certainly can't tell by looking at this blog. Rather than doing a tiresome catch up post, I'm just gonna jump back into the present and hopefully keep a better track record from here on out.

Fred's Birthday was last Friday. Hunter made a cute birthday banner for him - I helped him write out all the letters (I put down dotted lines and he traced over them with his crayons). The writing turned out a little light, so it would be hard to see in a photo, so I'm not going to post one. But, Hunter was SO proud of himself - it was very cute. In fact, even after spelling out "Happy Birthday Daddy!" he wanted to keep tracing letters, so we pulled out one of his Hooked on Phonics workbooks and did some more in there.

Friday night I surprised Fred with a night out. I arranged fro Ryan and Alexis to come over and babysit so we could go out on our own (it's been MONTHS since we've done that). I even managed to keep it a secret so it really was a surprise - which is amazing for me, I usually have a spacey moment and blow it. We went to dinner at Red Robin (he had a free burger coupon and he LOVE the bottomless fries).

Then we headed over to JCPenny. I had 2 $10 off coupons, so we split up and bought something for each other. We put a cap at $15 (only $5 after the coupon). It was a fun challenge. Although Fred was upset at me because I wouldn't allow him to use some of his birthday money to buy me a $30 skirt. He did get me a nice button up shirt - it was originally $30. And I got him a purple, black, gray and silver striped tie - it was originally $30 too. We each spent $5.33 (with tax) out of pocket - what great deals, huh?!

After our "shopping spree" (which it kind of was for us), we headed over to Payless shoe store. This was during the 50% off Oprah coupon event and Hunter needed new church shoes, so we decided to get some. We waited in line for 45 minutes! There were so many people there. We had a great time talking to everyone in line that it wasn't that bad at all. We were probably the only ones buying 1 pair of shoes - I would've loved to get more, but we just don't have the money right now.
Here's what we were able to get for less than $20 - Originally these items would've totaled over $80 wtih tax (Sorry the picture's so dark):


While it was a really simple date night, just the fact that we had a date night was SO wonderful.

On Sunday, we had a big birthday dinner as well. We invited over Jillian, Ryan and Alexis (and Maija), Mike and Alicia (and Katie & Ethan), and our neighbors Jade and David Griffith (and Ezra & Eli). Ezra was sick, so he and David didn't come, which was sad because Hunter loves Ezra. But, he had so much fun with Katie anyways. We had a big dinner with Allison's Brisket, blue cheese mashed potatoes, roasted asparagus and broccoli, salad, rolls, wassail and other drinks too. For dessert we had brownie sundaes. Fred REALLY wanted to play games with everyone, but it never happened. The kids were so crazy and with daylight savings, the kids were tired "earlier" so people had to head home before we could get out the games. We still had a great time talking and hanging out. We'll have to have a game night some other time just for Fred.
Unfortunately I didn't think about taking pictures. I did snap this one of the kids trying to grab the DVD logo on the TV as it bounced around the screen. At first it was just Maija and Ethan mesmerized by it and trying to grab it, then Katie got in on the action too.

Overall, I think Fred had a pretty good birthday. It was fun to turn the spotlight on him - he's so great a taking care of all of us that it was nice to give a special couple of days. Love ya babe! xoxo

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