A Memorial Day Weekend To Remember

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband of almost 9 years. I do believe this is his 15th consecutive birthday we have spent together, or something like that. Here's how the weekend went down....

I called my mom to have the kids over for a sleepover Saturday, so that John could have the day to do what he wanted and we could go out on a much needed date. Not counting my hospital stay, the last time we were out without kids was probably January or February. I took the kids to my mom's and he made beer. I went shopping at Ikea and spent my next 3 paychecks, but my new photo gallery area looks totally rockin'. We got home and went to see the new Star Trek movie...which was fine with me for 3 reasons.

1.) Eric Bana
2.) I HATE chick flicks, and though the story lines for Star Trek stuff are all kinda stupid and the same, it is at the very least entertaining.
3.) The new Captain Kirk isn't too bad either.

My hubbie is such a cheap and easy date that we went to Buffalo Wild Wings for a fancy dinner of Wings and beer and some bar trivia (at which, I totally kicked John's butt. I am a treasure chest of useless information). We went home, and here is where the evening turned slightly sour. I was SOOO excited to give him his gift, a Garmin Forerunner GPS enhanced heart rate monitor. This thing does everything, except scrub the kitchen floors. It tracks your running/biking/swimming course. It tells you how far you've gone, and how far you have left. It tracks calories and fat burned. I thought it'd be awesome since he's lost about 20 lbs since Christmas and has taken to running through the neighborhood, enjoying a 5 or 6 mile jaunt every other day or so.

He didn't like it. And I quote: "Yeah, I gotta be honest. I'm never gonna use it. You should probably send it back". Aaaaaannnnd deflate.

The next day we started staining our 3,000 square foot deck. It's still not done, but we got a huge chunk done because my mom made an executive decision to keep the kids an extra day because (and I quote again): "You can't get ANYTHING done with these kids around!" I swear, that was news to me. Some other fun quotes from my mom over the course of her weekend with the kiddos include:

"Your kids destroy things just to destroy them." Huh? I had NO idea.
"Nate can't do anything without getting messy. He's a little disaster." Mmmm, really? Have you seen my house?
"Nate tells stories. He's a liar." Uh, yah. Have you not paid attention when I told you about how he thinks he's Jesus?
"Jack is in time-out for running into Nate on purpose". He NEVER would do that at home, right?

But, the kids were having fun and the deck is mostly done, which we really couldn't have done with the kids there. I picked them up on Monday, daddy's real birthday and we made a cake and some bleu cheese flank steak, since he loves steak and bleu cheese. It was a lovely family dinner, even if it took the little ones about 45 minutes to finish their meal (every meal with them is a battle. Every. Single. One.) John got to open his birthday presents from the kids, since I took them to the dollar store to find something to give to someone else-not pick out what they would want. That was a small battle, trying to explain that "No, daddy does NOT want a remote control motorcycle or Barbie doll." John was soooo excited to open from the kids:

1.) From Jack-Garden gloves and a small shovel
2.) From Nate- a Jug of Hawaiian punch and a garden rake
3.) From Maddie- A squeaky dog toy and some Pork-n-Beans

In fact, he was so excited and happy about those gifts, that I decided next year I am getting him a few things from the dollar store myself.

But all in all, I think he had a nice birthday. He got a break from the kids. He got to make beer. He stained his deck.
Success.