BFF's

Gloria and Elsie had their 8th annual joint birthday celebration on Friday night. They are exactly 1 year and 5 days apart. Two years ago, I took the three girls to the mall after they all got their ears pierced together. This picture was taken in December 2005:

I know I sound like a broken record, but they grow up so fast!! :( Two very short years later:

Gloria has been looking forward to a Build-a-Bear birthday for several months. It's quite an experience, going to Build-a-Bear. . . First, you choose the animal you're going to stuff. . .

. . . then you wait in line at the stuffing machine and prepare for the heart ceremony. After the animal is stuffed, you choose a little heart and go through all the steps: kiss each side so your animal has lots of love, rub it on your nose for good luck, touch it to your forehead so it can be wise, jump up and down three times so it will have lots of energy and rub it on your cheek so it will always be warm. This is a very important and serious part of the process.

When you've gone through all the steps, you close your eyes and make a wish and the heart is placed lovingly inside with all the newly fluffed stuffing.

Now onto the grooming. . . blowing and brushing are very important to the health of your Build-a-Bear. . .

Last, but not least, the perfect outfit is chosen. This can take some time. . . lots and lots of time. . .

I let the girls take as much time as they needed and they were all very happy with the end result:

Now to conquer the mall. . . The first stop, of course, had to be Limited Too:

Here's another picture from 2005 at the same store:

They've changed just a bit. . . .

The pet store was right up there with Limited Too on must-see places:

We spent a total of 4 hours at the mall which put me over my yearly mall-time quota by about 4 hours. Back to the house to open presents.

Megan gave both of the girls a cool knitting craft kit:

They loved it!!!

Elsie gave Gloria a chair for her American Girl doll that was custom built and painted by Shawn. It's beautiful and she was thrilled!!

Because I'm such a great party hostess, I slaved over sugar cookies in the shape of bears for the girls to decorate. Actually, Jeanie brought me a kit a couple of weeks ago that contained everything necessary for this project and I remembered it was on top of my fridge at just the right moment!!

Bedtime finally arrived around midnight and before I knew what was happening, Gloria had drug both of her mattresses out to the living room and made a comfy bed. I'm not exactly sure what time sleep came, however, since I went to bed!!

I was awakened way too early to this!!!:

We all had a fun time and the girls spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon just hanging out and enjoying each other.

Iron and Wine on Letterman

Iron and Wine at The Egyptian

It turned out to be a really good show and I'm now a big fan of Iron and Wine!

Iron and Wine Set Up and Sound Check

Our upcoming show at The Egyptian requires a piano so we decided to rent them ours. It's really not as difficult to move as one would think. It's just a matter of having plenty of muscle and a handy dandy case to put it in. Dale offered his muscles and between the three of us, we were able to pack it up and load it in the truck in about 30 minutes on Wednesday.

Rob spent the day setting up our sound system at the theater and was close to being finished when the kids and I showed up after church.

We spent a couple of hours double checking everything so we would be ready for a 1:00 p.m. sound check with the group Iron and Wine on Thursday. It's so nice to have a full day of preparation before a show like this. Although I had not heard of this group, they have a huge following and the show was sold out. This kind of pressure always weighs heavily on my mind but Rob is good at what he does and we were ready to go when the band arrived. Rob enjoyed having his piano on the stage.

Once all of the band's equipment was in place, we had to mic everything up according to the stage plot.

When a group like this comes to town, they almost always have a front-of-house technician and you never know how easy or difficult they will be until they arrive and approve or disapprove of the sound gear and set-up. Everyone in this group was easy to work with and had very few demands.

I took a bunch of pictures during sound check and really enjoyed listening to this man sing. He has an incredible voice.

The sound check went well and we're looking forward to a good show.

My Birthday!

Wednesday was my birthday. Turning 41 was easy compared to turning 40 last December. I anticipated and struggled with my 40th for 6 months before my birthday last year. This year, it barely registered that I am a year older. I'm not afraid of getting older, I'm afraid of having regrets. I don't want to spend my time and energy on things that won't really matter in the end. I think my blog has helped me put things in perspective. I like the fact that in my "labels" listed alongside the posts there are 94 posts under the category of "friends". I hadn't thought about it during the year, but looking back, I had more posts about friends than any other category. I love my friends!! :) This is me at age 4 in 1970:

My sister took me to a little diner for breakfast to celebrate. She also gave me a birthday gift: 4 tickets for our family to ride the Christmas Train from Horseshoe Bend to Banks on the 16th!!! The rest of the day unfolded like most Wednesdays do. Schoolwork, housework, quizzing and Kid's Club. I received lots of birthday wishes and felt very blessed by the special friendships in my life. In Kid's Club we made Christmas tags for the Women's Missionary Fellowship auction. The kids are thrilled to help raise money for missions. I think these will bring in a chunk of change:

Even though my heart was heavy from the junk that happened on Tuesday, I had a sense of peace in the knowledge that my identity is not in what I do but in Whose I am. I got to practice praying for someone that I really didn't want to pray for. I was kicking and screaming just a little bit in my mind about it, but I was finally able to pray for the person who "persecuted" us and felt much better when I just let it go.

Bad News and Birthdays

Rob had a crazy-busy weekend while we were away on the quiz trip. He had a show with the band, Half The World, on Friday night and he set up and ran sound for Opera Idaho at The Egyptian on Saturday. By Sunday, he was missing his family something terrible.

On Tuesday I spent the day recovering from the trip and catching up on long overdue paperwork. Just before we left the shop to go to Rob's parent's house for a birthday celebration, I checked Rob's e-mail to find a scathing, vicious, undeserved personal attack from someone we were scheduled to do a show for next week. Rob replied with a defense, an apology and an offer to step down from the show. The offer was accepted. It was all very unexpected and devastating. Losing the show wasn't the bad part- it was the personal attack that hit us the hardest. In all our years of running sound, we have only had positive feedback. Rob has a great reputation in town for his integrity and professionalism so this was a difficult blow. We tried to set it aside and enjoy our evening, but it was difficult. (We later found out that this is a common occurrence with this particular person and it happens often. We were fearing repercussions from people who had ties with him but know now that those fears are unfounded.) It doesn't help matters that Rob has a mind-blowing toothache and we have several critical looming deadlines coming up. So, anyway, on to the party. . .

Since Gloria's birthday is so close to mine, we usually celebrate together. I don't mind at all having a teddy bear theme!! Gloria is way into Webkins, so she was very excited about this new leopard:

Cody is going to the Tool concert next weekend and was trying to help us understand why.

Our party game was making fabulous creations out of Play dough.

Kelsey and her Furbie:

This picture does not do justice to Tony's perfectly formed Sponge Bob:

Jeanie made a cute little teddy bear:

I'm not sure who did this:

Zach's Veggie Tales:

As usual, Jeanie out did herself! She always fixes a favorite food for the birthday person at these parties along with favorite candies and dessert. She knew I wanted homemade noodles but when she asked Gloria earlier in the week what her special meal should be, the response was, "Top Ramen". Who knew?? Jeanie also made me a yummy berry cobbler along with Gloria's cute chocolate bear cake:

Hugs and kisses:

Linky Love (Gregg, did you coin that phrase???)

These are two really good blogs I visited today that were worth every minute I spent there. They are well worth checking out:
http://greggsgambles.com/
http://branthansen.typepad.com/