And now I'm 40! :)

Well, it's here!  It's one of those birthday's that you think about quite often in your life and finally I've seen it.  :)   I never have thought it would be super hard on me and so far I still feel the same way.  It's just a milestone and the actual day doesn't mean much.  I think the last few years have been different as far as how I view myself and my life.  Lots of thinking, remembering, trying to put some type of clarity and focus on the "meaning of life".  It's all very interesting.  :)

As far as the actual day itself...it was actually so nice!  I don't usually look at my birthday as a big deal but this year I was really looking forward to have a "me" day which I definitely did!  I started off the day by being very lazy and sleeping in!  Well, I don't know if I actually slept late but I didn't get out of bed, which to me is just as good.  After checking out how amazingly clean the house was...thanks to the kids and especially Jessie!...we all decided to head out to lunch at my favorite place, Texas Roadhouse.  We very rarely all go out to eat together so that was a nice change.  Evan is finally old enough and behaving well enough to do that so I think we'll have to take advantage of it more often!  We went by the mall afterward to see a picture Hadley had displayed.  Apparently the art department at Jackson decided to put a few displays out and Hadley's was picked!  It was really cute.  After that we headed over to the movie theater, although not without what has become a regular occurrence when we are all together as a family.  Bryan came upon a wreck and stopped to help since he was the first one on the scene.  It was a traffic accident at an intersection.  I think everyone was okay but there was a 6 year old little girl who was knocked out which is scary.  Anyway...we ended up making it to the movie and saw "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" which is taken from a series of books a few of my boys have read for years.  We weren't sure how Evan would handle the movie but were prepared for Bryan to take him out and home if necessary.  Well, he did amazingly well!  At one point Bryan and I just laughed so hard...we looked down the row to check on him and he is sitting in this big chair leaning forward over a huge tub of popcorn just glued to the screen!  It was so cute!!  I wish I had a picture of it.  The movie ended up being pretty cute.  Definitely a family movie but nothing I would see without kids.  Conner and Landon hated it but who knows...maybe they are just too zoned into being teenagers to appreciate any family type movie right now.  :)

After our day out we headed home to relax and do our normal family birthday party.  I was very pleasantly surprised when we pulled up to see cars in the driveway and find that Stacy, Dory, Dad, Kim, Jacob and my nephews and nieces were there to celebrate with me!  It was so unexpected and caught me so off guard.  We had a really nice time and Stacy brought the beautiful birthday cake that you can see in the picture above!  So sweet!  Stacy and Dory gave me an adorable wagon that will sit out in the flower bed that says Beck and under it says Est. 1989.  It's so nice!  Dad and Kim gave me some nice perfume and beautiful bracelet.  Lodema brought over two tulip plants and the New Moon DVD along with pre ordering a book I can't wait to read!  I felt like a little kid again.  haha       

We ended the birthday evening playing a Wii game called Just Dance.  It was fun!  Between myself, Stacy, Jessie, Jacob, Libby, Hadley, Payton, and Broderick I think I was most impressed with Jessie!  Who knew she could move that well?!  haha.  After she refused to dance at the age of 4 I don't think I've ever seen her do any type of dancing so that was fun.  (Jacob did a pretty nice job himself!  haha!)  No...I didn't manage to get Bryan up in front of the TV to show off any moves although I should have guilted him into it using my birthday somehow.  Maybe next year.                                  

Spring is almost here!

It is hard to believe how fast winter has flown by but I'm not sad about seeing it come to a close!  Spring is coming this weekend (I think the first day is usually my birthday but I'm not positive!) and I'm so ready for warm weather all the time.  I noticed yesterday that our bulbs are shooting out of the ground!  Pretty soon we'll have beautiful flowers and green grass...of course along with those wonderful things come the stressing about the boys mowing, etc.  Oh well, I won't worry about that right now.  :)  Just have to say though...I miss the days when we had Coach Wachter mowing every week and I just knew I could sit back enjoy our yard.  I know it's good for the boys to have jobs but I wish it didn't involve me having to gripe at them once I see how long the grass has gotten or having to feel irritated by the fact that they miss spots or there is grass all over the driveway, etc.  I could go on and on.  Ughh!  Enough.

We've been our normal busy selves the last few weeks.  Orthodontist appointments which included Payton getting his braces on!  Poor kid is finally getting to the point where he can actually eat hard food.  They put all of the braces on in one day AND his rubber bands!  I was actually really surprised since all three older kids have had, or have, braces and usually it takes months before they use rubber bands.  He's handled it well though.  I had minor surgery on my leg to take care of some not so pretty veins that were giving me some problems.  It went fine and my leg is healing nicely although tons of bruises.  I'm suppose to be wearing these support hose which are the worst thing you've ever seen!  haha.  They are so thick and painful that I actually only lasted one day.  They said three weeks!  I don't think so.  (Hopefully I don't regret that someday.)  ;)   What else...oh, Conner and Landon have been busy with choir.  Their spring concert was last week and Sunday we went over and they were having a recital with all of the individual performances they are taking to contest this week.  Conner is singing with his Boys 8 again this year and Landon is with two groups.  One is a Boys 8 his age and the other is a Mixed 8.  All the groups were pretty good although on Sunday during the recital Conner couldn't stop laughing when their group had a few issues.  That wasn't good!  Landon did fine except Bryan and I noticed at the same time with one of the groups that he forgot his words!  haha.  It was pretty obvious to us although he tried to fake his way through it.  We'll see how they do Friday at contest.  :)   Their full choir is amazing and there isn't any question in my mind they will get all ones again.  They always do.  

New topic...68 days until our trip!!  Getting so pumped!  I just ordered a Safepack backpack for us to use during the trip and I love it!  It's amazing and has steel wires in the bag to keep anyone from cutting the straps.  (Apparently there are tons of pick pockets where we are touring and the more I read about it the more I felt we needed something better than my normal purse or Bryan keeping things in his wallet.)  I talked to Disney the other day and our Adventure package we are using for touring is full already!  They were taking 40 people in the group and he said they filled up quickly.  It's kind of an experiment for them to use Adventures by Disney along with the cruise.  He said once the new ship Disney is building is done and they have a ship permanently in the Med. they will probably mix both of them again.  

Well, the other big news of the week is my BIG 40th is on Saturday!  Hard to believe, really.  Bryan and I have talked about trading the Suburban in (okay, I've talked about it TO Bryan) and yesterday when he came home from work early he told me we were going over to get the car I have been talking about!  Yay!  Anyway...we went over and after finding out we could get a great trade in price on the Suburban I picked out a new Traverse!  I love it!  It should take 4 to 6 weeks to get here.  Of course, I picked black. I can't help it...I just can't see myself loving anything more than black.  I wonder if that makes me totally boring?  haha.  I have read somewhere that people who pick the color black for their cars are introverted and somewhat antisocial.  I guess that would fit me a little bit.  More as I get older, that's for sure!  :)

I am looking forward to the weekend though...Jessie is coming home and we haven't seen her for a couple of weeks.  I told Bryan that for my birthday I wanted all of us to go to eat and a movie.  That sounds kind of boring to most people but we rarely ever go out to eat as a FULL family unless we are on vacation and we never go to the movie together anymore.  I have to drag Bryan to a theater so I have to make it something I really want to see.  (Of course, since we are all going I have to pick a kids movie so I guess I'm limited!  haha)  Think Avatar is considered kid friendly?  ;)  I guess not.

Glad it's March

It's been a normal busy week here in the Beck house.  Lots going on as usual.  Spent the weekend being kind of lazy, which was wonderful!  Jessie came home which made it all the more wonderful.  Bryan took pity on me and took a turn with the boys and their swimming commitments and spent the weekend in St. Louis for the Ozark Championships.  Landon qualified to swim the mile and Payton qualified in a couple of back strokes and a free style and he also swam 4 relays.  Doesn't sound like much but the swims are all spread out over a few days so it's A LOT of waiting around with a packed house.  Exhausting actually.  Landon ended up cutting his time again which was awesome.  Payton had an up and down weekend.  The bad news was that he and the three boys he was swimming his relays with were on the pool deck and because of all of the chaos they actually missed their swim!  (Bryan said that Coach Steve was so mad at them that he almost sent them all home. haha)  The great news was that he qualified for the finals swim in one swim and came out with an A time!  His first and he's been working on it for over a year...so it was wonderful for him.  We keep telling him if he was a little more consistent with practices he'll have a bunch of A times.  We'll see.  Part of his problem is his mother.  :)   It's hard to get him to practice 5 to 6 times a week when we are so busy and there is so much going on!  OH WELL...we'll just keep doing our best.  ;)

Parent teacher conferences were last week and after hitting all 4 schools and meeting with a ridiculous number of teachers, all seems to be well with the kids and their grades.  I did hear something fun about Hadley from her Alert teacher though.  She attends Alert once a week for half a day and at the beginning of the day they get a sheet of "thinkercises" and it's full of mysterys or puzzles (that kind of thing).  She told me that Hadley does so well on them that the class has made it almost a challenge to knock her out of the top three in the class because she's been there all year.  I thought that was pretty cool...especially since she has never told me that and the teacher said it's an honor.  :)   

Today should be a little hectic because we are having our last team meeting with Matt!  I'm excited and a little worried all at the same time.  I am so ready to move forward with Evan though!!  He's still doing great and talking to everyone he sees which is fun but is starting to concern me as well.  On Sunday we were walking down the hallway together and an older sister in the Ward walked by and said hello.  He looked at here and said, "You're so small" and just kept saying it!  ugh!  She is short but still.  She kept walking and didn't act like she heard him so who knows....but he's just very blunt and who knows what he's going to say in the future!  hmmm.  He could get a little embarrassing.  haha.

Okay...Evan just woke up so that's going to be it for now.  His new thing to call me is "little girl" so the first words for this morning are, "Hey little girl...good morning".  lol.