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Birthdays Galore

Weekly Happenings: This week kicked off our birthday month. Mine was on Tuesday and Joseph’s was on Thursday. I call it our birthday month because Paul’s will be in a couple of weeks. Poor Abigail has to wait until December…but we did what we could to help her not feel left out (it’s tough to be three and just starting to understand birthdays, but not understanding that you need to wait three more months for your birthday, when literally everyone else in your family is having one within days of each other). We ate out both nights (birthday person’s choice) and had cake and ice cream (and presents).

The Weekly Weather: It’s been disgustingly humid. We have had quite a bit of rain the past couple of days, though, which has been nice. Next week, we’re supposed to have a legitimate cold front come through that will drop the temperature into the 70s for a couple of days. I’m ridiculously excited!

What Paul’s Been Up To: He had work, and yard work, and all of that fun stuff. He also spent a good chunk of his day today hanging up all sorts of things for me upstairs. I’m so blessed with my hardworking husband!

What Sarah’s Been Up To: My birthday was pretty great. A friend dropped by and surprised me with a homemade cake. Then we ordered take-out (Olive Garden) and I opened presents (a book of Strange Planet comics, a blow-dryer brush, and a new doormat). I also had a couple of friends drop by with flowers and a cookie. Other than that, my week was full of helping Joseph with school, keeping Abigail happy, and trying to put a dent in the housework that I’ve been…trying to ignore, haha.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: For his birthday, I made him a cake (we made sure to share leftovers of my cake with friends and Paul’s coworkers so we wouldn’t be completely overwhelmed with an abundance of cake), got the kids Happy Meals for lunch, and then Joseph chose to go pick up Panda Express for dinner. We squeezed in present opening (some video game characters, a few new video games, and then a new computer that will make distance learning easier…then when that’s over, it’ll be a good addition to the “man cave”) and cake and ice cream.

What Abigail’s Been Up To: She’s been liking having a little more one-on-one time with me (in between me helping Joseph with school). She is also expanding her imaginative play. She likes to speak out loud for her toys. I can tell the difference between her talking to me (she’ll call me “Mom”) versus her toys talking to me (she’ll call me “Abigail’s mom”). It was really cute when my friend dropped by with the cake. Abigail ran up and said, “Hi! My name is Abigail!” (which was kind of funny because my friend totally knows who she is, but this is one of the first times Abigail has introduced herself to someone, so that made it cute). Oh, and today at Hobby Lobby, she was sitting in the cart and if we were walking towards someone, she would say, “Excuse, me, ma’am!” (regardless of gender, haha). So then we had a little talk about when to say “ma’am” and when to say “sir”. 😀

This Week in Pictures (warning: there’s a lot this week):

I had a dentist appointment this week. Paul sent me this picture that he took while I was gone.
She wanted to be a queen dancer (complete with dancing shoes…thank goodness her church shoes kind of look like ballet shoes).
She asked me for fancy hair and wanted me to use all of her butterfly clips. Then she took it all out an hour later. Good thing I only spent about ten minutes doing it in the first place!
I couldn’t find a quote about September that I liked better than the one I used last year, so I just used the same one. 😀
Abigail was excited about getting the fall decorations out. Now, if only the weather would cooperate!
She loved getting to sing “Happy Birthday”. She also loved that I let her help me blow out my candles.
School days mean early mornings….and sometimes not everybody is quite ready.
This is what a 9-year-old looks like (and an almost-4-year-old). 😀
Yup. That’s ranch in her hair. Also, she may have been fishing a french fry out of her ranch…or she might have been just dipping her finger in it…I wasn’t watching too closely. 😉
Joseph’s cake. I love when he wants toys as cake toppers…it makes “decorating” a lot easier!
No friend party this year, but we still put up his favorite birthday sign.
Unwrapping presents.
A game he’s wanted for a while (Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild).
We got him a couple of games.
These little figurines have something embedded in them that can be activated with his Switch, so that their character can appear in the game and do something (as you can tell, I’m clearly VERY knowledgeable about this…). 😉
Paul’s brother also got Joseph a couple of games.
I love how excited he was about everything.
I mean…
…his face says it all.
Our toad hopped into my planter to get away from all the rain (his burrow was probably flooded).
Cake! Abigail’s face should tell you that we were singing “Happy Birthday”.
Blowing out the candle. I had to put my hand in front of Abigail’s mouth, though, because I knew Joseph wouldn’t be as happy as I was about her wanting to help blow out the candle. 😀
Enjoying ice cream…
…and cake.
This sunset caught my breath. I love when it goes purple.
She insisted I take her picture. I was more than happy to oblige.
Paul had some business that took him past Bucc-ee’s, so he picked up this shirt for Abigail…
…this shirt for Joseph…
…and this magnet for me (he knows I like magnets).
One thing that Paul hung up in the loft was this bulletin board that used to be in Joseph’s room (we had to take it down when his new bed went in). I put fresh paper (I had some left over from when I originally put paper on there, but it was that really good paper that doesn’t fade…that paper’s 8 years old, y’all) and a new border (which I got at Hobby Lobby) on it and turned it into a “gallery” for the kids’ artwork. Now I just need to get Abigail to make something for it.
I found this cute metal pumpkin at Hobby Lobby and knew it would be perfect for this spot.
Abigail already had this metal flower over her door, so I wanted to get things to put over our door and Joseph’s door…
…so I found this for our door…
…and this for Joseph’s door. Now all of our bedroom doors have identifiers over them.
I also found these fun decor items for the loft.
The wall’s done!
Paul also got some things hung up in Abigail’s room: a picture of the Savior walking with a little girl and her name page that we got from one of Paul’s work picnics. Basically, since there are a lot of people at Paul’s work that speak different languages, they will take a paper and write your name in a bunch of different languages. Joseph also has one (his is a strip of paper with his name in different languages…which is still cool, but I kind of wish it had the names of the languages on them like this one does, just because I don’t recognize a lot of them).
Paul also rehung the picture of Pikachu that I drew for Joseph. We had to take it down when we moved Joseph’s new bed in, but he told me he kind of missed it, so we found a new place for it.