A Little Catching Up

It has been sooooo long since I've spent time blogging! I've got a lot of catching up to do.

I'll start with my birthday a while ago. The big 3-7! Time sure flies. I got to do a lot of shopping, which was great because I totally needed new summer clothes. I think I probably visited every mall and clothing store within 45 minutes of here. It seems like it's always harder to find things I like that I think it would be. Luckily I enjoy the "hunt"! DH and I went to P.F. Chang's for my birthday dinner date. My favorite gift (that I picked for myself) is a charm bracelet. I even have a little chinese take-out box on it--not only is it my favorite food, but it'll remind me of our birthday date together. I remember loving my mom's charm bracelets when i was little, so it was fun to get one of my own.
Left to right the charms are: measuring cup, corgi, family, chinese take-out, wedding ring, and garden gnome (my favorite).

Here I am holding the Playdoh birthday cake DH2 made for me:On my birthday, Smuckers had to get sugery. He completely tore his ACL ligament in his knee. It would be risky to not fix it because he could injure his second hind leg by favoring it and then he'd really be in trouble. He's doing much better now, but he was pretty pathetic for the first few days. I had to cook him chicken and brown rice because the medicine made him sick and he wouldn't eat. The whole family gave him extra TLC. He loves pillows--he would sleep like this for hours.We are loving this great spring weather we've been having. On Sunday we decided to drive to the top of Lake Mountain. The whole family piled into the Jeep and took a super bumpy ride all the way to the top. DH2 cried a little because she was scared but then she calmed down and was a trooper the rest of the way.
School is almost over! Yay! I'm ready to not have to worry about homework, bedtimes, alarm clocks, etc. Plus, I'm taking the kids to St. Louis for a week and we're really looking forward to it! Yesterday was DH2's preschool graduation. She was so cute. She kept blowing me kisses from her place in line. Here she is singing the "book song". She's opening her "book" and looking inside.She was one of the last ones called up to get her diploma and treats, and I thought she was so cute just sitting there watching the other kids walk past her.


And her moment finally came : ) No more preschoolers in our family!
Yesterday I was driving home from Kari's and a police car pulled behind me from the Chevron. I always feel a little nervous with a police car behind me. I remembered as he was following me that our tail-light got broken a while back (because I backed into something--doh!) and the moisture had blown out the bulb. I knew he would see it. However, he followed me through the intersection and all the construction traffic so I thought maybe he was off duty or something. No such luck. The moment I turned onto the side road, he flipped his lights on. I'm feeling pretty guilty right now because I fibbed and said "I knew it was broken but I didn't realize the light had quit working"--I guess it wouldn't have changed the outcome anyway. I just like to be honest and sometimes I don't live up to that. Oh, well. He gave me a fix-it ticket. I have to fix it, find a police officer to sign off that I fixed it, and then go to the courthouse and they'll remove the ticket from my record. He thanked me for being so nice and said that doesn't happen too often. Hopefully that makes up for my fib, right? I hope a bulb fixes it for now, because I've broken this same tail-light before and it's not a cheap fix!