Make way for the birthday girl!

From 2009-02 (Feb)

I don't think anyone else in our family could possibly be as excited as Abby about turning eight tomorrow (Feb 16). Her birthday also conveniently falls on a school holiday (Presidents' Day), so not only does she get to have a day long birthday celebration, she also gets the day off from school. I wasn't that lucky when my birthday came around a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I spent most of my birthday at work helping haul over 3500 pounds of batteries in and out of a building. I should have taken that day off!

Pam has big plans for Abby. She is having a party with her school friends early in the day, then in the evening she is having a party with family. Pam has been baking her birthday cake and the house smells heavenly right now.

We hope everyone had a good Valentine's Day. Pam arranged for a sitter for us at least a week in advance, so we were able to slip away for a pleasant dinner - just the two of us. We call that "table for two time." It is always nice when we get a chance to do that. I got Pam some flowers which have been filling our house with a wonderful fragrance and she got me some delicious chocolate covered strawberries. (They were really good!)

Today was a bit frustrating for me. It was my turn to run the audio equipment during our church service and it was malfunctioning the minute I fired it up. I had to think fast and improvise to get things sounding OK, but I still got requests for adjustments. Our recording equipment has been malfunctioning occasionally and I was worried I would not be able to capture the sermon this time. However, I managed to get it working well enough to record, but I was never totally happy with how things ran. That was the beginning of my stressful day.

My day got much worse when I decided to take the car Pam typically drives in for some much needed service. The tires were worn out, the shocks were bad and the brakes were questionable. I didn't want to burden Pam with taking the car in for service - especially while dealing with kids and their intricate schedules, so I chose to give up part of my Sunday afternoon to make the car safe for her. I spent over four hours sitting and pacing around as they slowly replaced four tires, four shocks and two brakes. I was told the work would only take about an hour and a half. After years of dealing with this place I have learned that when they give you an estimate on how long your car will take, you better double that figure and plan on camping out and bothering them regularly so you don't get forgotten. Today was the longest I have ever waited and they were not even busy. Two of their guys were clowning around and at least twice, other workers stopped working to come in and watch the TV in the customers' lounge!

When I finally got free from the automotive torture chamber and paid them a king's ransom for their slow service, it was already supper time and Pam had been stuck at home with the kids. I ended up dashing through the store to pick up some things Pam had ordered for Abby's party and bringing home take-out fast food for supper. Then it was time to shift into the night time routines of getting the kids bathed and into bed. This is not how I had imagined my day going. I was hoping to spend some quality time getting ready for my music camp which is coming up in a little over two weeks. That didn't happen today and most likely won't happen tomorrow since we'll be busy celebrating Abby's birthday. Maybe I'll get some time on Tuesday evening...

David is still doing fine. He's showing us just how much of a two year old he can be, but he can also behave like a complete sweetheart a short time later. We've noticed that he is starting to compete with Abby for Pam's affection. We're correcting him where he needs it, but most of this should play out as he grows older. We try to be as even-handed as possible with the kids' attention. So, this is probably just some plain old sibling rivalry.

We'll try to get some good pictures of Abby's birthday fun tomorrow. I'll post the best ones to our web albums, so stay tuned...