I'm Old Enough to Drive...Twice!

Thanks to everyone for my birthday wishes. I had a wonderful birthday, and as has become tradition with me, I've managed to spread it across multiple days.

The fun things we've done for my birthday:

• Going out to dinner with friends.
• A movie date, just us.
• Going to another friends for dinner and games.
• A baseball game.
• The demolition derby!

The bad part about my birthday was the realization of my age. I really don't feel old, and I'm cool with my age. In fact, I feel younger than I am because everybody I know that is my age has kids in school, and the people we know who are just starting their families are in their early twenties, so I feel like I'm closer in age to the second group.

Back to feeling bad: Two days before my birthday the nice girl at the bank reminded me that my license was about to expire. I could have just renewed by mail, but I wanted a new picture because I'm 75 lbs. lighter and generally in a better mood. (Refer to the before and afters.)

When I get to the driver's license place, I'm doing the paper work, and I realize that I'm twice as old as I was the first time I did this! I am actually old enough that I could have been born when I got my license and I would be able to get it again.

Other than this, not a bad birthday.

Some gifts:

• The Bourne trilogy.
• A gorilla pod. (From Harrison.)
• The board game Curses.
  
• Very nice photo collages of me and my baby.
• A wonderful scrapbook that Elisha put together after finding old high school photos. It's beautiful, and I know she worked so hard on it.

Again, thanks to everyone.

I'm a Birthday Beggar

It's true! I absolutely love my birthday. I don't care how old I get, as long as I get more birthdays. Because I love my birthday so much, I make sure everybody knows that my birthday is coming. However, once the big day hits, I always like to see who actually remembers, so I don't say anything on the actual day.

Guess what? My birthday is coming up. This Saturday, August 8th. I'm so excited. We haven't made any real plans yet, but they're coming soon.

Since my birthday hasn't happened yet this year, and I want something to blog about, I will blog about my last birthday.

I don't know if you've noticed, but my birthday happens to be on the best day of the year. Well, I think so, but that's because my favorite number is 8. So last year, not only was my birthday on the 8th day of the 8th month, it was also in the 8th year. Awesome!


So in honor of the number, we let 8's rule the day. First, we decided to go out to eat, so to choose the restaurant, I looked in the phone book for the restaurant with the most 8's in the phone number. (No fast food or delivery, otherwise it would have been Domino's.) There was a 5 way tie, but Winger's beat them out because they also had two 8's in the address.


Before dinner I went to Target and bought a Magic 8 Ball. I had to choose between a High School Musical one, or a Hannah Montana one. Apparently, Disney has a monopoly on the Magic 8 Ball industry. You probably guessed that I chose High School Musical, but I went with Hannah instead.


The rest of the day the 8 ball made all my decisions for me. We didn't have a lot of friends available to get together with us, but my 9 year-old cousin, John, was spending the weekend with us, so that influenced our decisions. First I asked the 8 ball if we should go play mini-golf. It said:

I've got nerve & I say no
(You may need to click on the pictures to read them better.)

So mini-golf was out. Next I asked if we should do the bumper boats. Same answer. John was getting pretty sad. Finally when I asked about laser tag, we got the answer we were looking for:

As I see it, Yes

After we were done, John convinced me to ask it again about the boats. The 8 ball said yes to everything else we asked that day. So I guess we really didn't leave things to chance, we just let it decide the order of events.

I guess I'm one of "Those" people

I can't believe, less than two months have passed, and I've already become one of "those" people.

What people, you ask?

The kind of person who takes a baby to a movie!

There's no need to curse me, I've already done that myself.

Seriously, who takes an infant to a movie?

Okay, I apologize if you have done such a thing. Don't be offended, because now I'm one of you.

Let me explain:

When Elisha and I moved to St. George, we assumed that there were no babysitters in the whole community. We saw babies everywhere, and as newlyweds, of course the first thing that came to mind was: "Why don't these people get a babysitter?"

We saw babies at movies, no matter the time of day. We saw babies at live productions, even though the program said no children under 7. We even saw a baby and a toddler at a live production of Sweeney Todd. I had nightmares after that one, I can only imagine the poor children!

Don't get me wrong. Elisha loves babies, and I love, well, Harrison. So, we don't mind seeing them. There are just certain times that babies should be left home, and watching a play wherein people have their throats cut every five minutes is one of those times.

So, with such strong feelings, how did I become one of "those" people?

Well, I have a baby, and I wanted to go see a movie. It's really that simple.

Elisha was planning to go to SLC without me for the weekend, and we decided it would be nice to go out and have fun before she left. So we packed up the baby, went to Shroomies* for an awesome burger, and then we went to see The Proposal. We went to the five o'clock show, on a Wednesday, hoping the audience would be small. Especially since the movie has been out for awhile.

Overall, it was a successful operation. We only had to take him out into the hall once, and it wasn't because he was making too much noise, he just needed to be changed. We fed him, and he didn't even offer his usual protest screams when we burped him. Although, he did burp loud enough for the whole theatre to hear. He wasn't absolutely silent the whole time, but I figured his quick little squeaks weren't any worse than the cell phone that rang-multiple times!

I'm not sure we'll take him back anytime soon. We both decided it would be easier just to plan ahead and find a babysitter, but if we do we have some rules:

• No movies after 6.
• No action or really loud movies.
• No Saturday movies.

That way I still can feel like I'm not exactly one of "those" people.

*Some people feel like restaurants are another place where small children shouldn't be seen. This depends on the restaurant. If you have to dress up, and then get financing to cover the cost, then maybe you should leave the kid at home. Otherwise, I've actually always thought it is really cute when the kid at the next table pokes his head over just to say "Hi."