The Celebration Continues!

In honor of my birthday, the kids decided to make the whole week super fun :) First Eva, Laura, and Kylie developed conjunctivitis. Beth had eye irritation the week before, but we thought it was just allergies and treated it with castor oil. Hers cleared up within two days. Kylie got to stay home both Tuesday and Wednesday, which meant I got to sleep in :) Rob gets the kids off to school now to try and give me an extra hour of sleep in the mornings. Usually Eva wakes up before 8am though. With Kylie home, she and Eva hung out together and I got lots of sleep :) Of course, I paid for it by having to take five kids to the doctor. I took Eva, Laura, and Kylie in to get antibiotic drops as the castor oil wasn't cutting it for them. I pulled Beth and Jack out of school a few hours early as I didn't know if I would be home in time to pick them up from school. Meg's grade had testing that day, so Betsy said she'd walk Megs home.

Before picking the kids up, Kylie, Laura, Eva, and I picked up gyros from a Greek cafe and took them over to Kiki's house for lunch. Kiki and I share a birthday, but she had meetings all day on Wednesday, so we decided to celebrate a day early.

The doctor's visit wasn't bad. All the kids behaved pretty well. The excitement continued that evening though when Eva slammed the door on Jack's fingers hard enough that we were afraid they were broken. Kiki came over and Rob and I headed off for a romantic evening at the urgent care center with Jack and Laura.

Despite the pain in his fingers, Jack seemed to quite enjoy the evening. The doctor walked in and Jack announced "I've never seen anyone that looked like you before!" (The doctor was a balding man of Middle Eastern descent.) Fortunately the doctor was used to children and laughed. He then explained to Jack that Jack had never seen anyone like him because he was one of a kind . . . except for his identical twin brother who was also a doctor. They had a wonderful discussion about the doctor's hair, or lack thereof. Jack is so tactful. *sigh* When the x-ray tech came in to bring Jack back for his x-rays, Jack informed him that he had never heard anyone speak like the tech did (he had a Texan accent, which I wouldn't think would be an accent Jack hadn't heard considering where we live). Jack's fingers weren't broken, but they were pretty badly bruised, so he got to stay home on Wednesday with Kylie.

We didn't do much on Wednesday until Megan and Beth got home from school. (Although Beth is reading over my shoulder as I type and wants me to be sure to include her field trip to the Sea Life Aquarium that day - we will give that it's own post). Since Kiki had meetings all day, we decided to make her birthday special. The kids each made her homemade cards and Megan made her a origami crane. We jumped in the car and drove to Kroger to get her a small red velvet cake and sushi for her dinner. Everyone except Laura (who was asleep in the car) surprised Kiki and sung happy birthday to her.

We didn't stay long as Kiki had meetings she had to be part of. Rob worked straight through lunch so he could get home early and spend half an hour with me before sending me out for the evening. My birthday present from Rob was a night out on the town, which for me means I got to go get a spa pedicure and go out to dinner!

Betsy and Jojo joined me. We had a fabulous time at the nail salon and had a lot of fun talking with each other and the nail technicians. Of course, anything with Jojo and Betsy is fun :) We headed over to Olive Garden for dinner. Our dinner conversation included references to the four horses of the apocalypse and the possibility of using my little ponies as visual aids for them in a Bible lesson, a discussion on feminist therapy (which is messed up), and philosophy (the glass is not half empty or half full, it is completely full - half water and half air), among other things. We struck up a conversation with four kids (late teens, early twenties maybe) at a nearby table and all of them loudly sung happy birthday to me (we were the only ones in our wing of the restaurant as, unbeknownst to us, a huge storm was going over us - we were laughing too much to notice). 

Thank you Betsy and Jojo for an amazing evening and thank you Rob for watching the kids and for the pedicure! Thank you also to everyone who emailed, called, texted, and left messages on facebook! You guys totally made my day :) It was one of my best birthday nights ever! Yay for being 35! :)