A New Toy, Birthday Fun, and Flat Visitors

Okay, so I'm pretty sure that up until this past Saturday we were the only family in the Western United States that didn't own a laptop. (No, make that the second family...Chip's parents don't have one!) I am happy to say that I am typing this blog entry on "our" (we all really know it's mine) new laptop and loving every minute of it.

As a couple, Chip and I are hopelessly behind the times in terms of technology. I attribute this to laziness on my part and frugality on Chip's. Anyway, we were the people who didn't have cable television until about 6 years ago. I remember Caitlin being so excited to tell everyone we had finally got cable and they'd look at her like she told them we'd just put in indoor plumbing. In fact, I was sure when I finally got around to social networking by getting a Facebook page that I would find out within a week or so that Facebook was passe and everyone was on to some newer, better way of socializing via the internet. So far, so good in that regard.

I am realizing quite quickly, however, that if I thought surfing the net while sitting at the desk in our office was a time eater, well....I ain't seen nothing' yet!

Last week was my 45th birthday and I have to say I had a wonderful 3 day long celebration. I am truly blessed to have so many friends and family with whom to celebrate special days with. My friend Mary took me to lunch on my birthday and after three hours we had eaten half of our delicious, healthy stir-fry, but had managed to polish off a bottle of wine and each eat an entire dessert. Well, Mary did leave some of her dessert, but I ate every rich, decadent chocolate morsel of mine because it's my birthday and I'll overindulge if I want to. Chip and I went to lunch at Zucca's on Friday where we had a wonderful time and some really good food. On Saturday night, my mom had us over, along with some friends, for some food and fun. I guess it's a good thing birthdays only come around once a year or I'd never get anything done and would gain a ton of weight.

Last week we had Chip's sister, Ann, stop through for the night on her way to see the folks in Montana. She's heading back this week, so we'll get another much anticipated visit from her. Caitlin and Sam just LOVE their Aunt Ann. She's such fun and when we're all together we laugh a lot and talk about all kinds of things. Maybe we can get a picture of them all together on her next visit.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention our other visitor who's staying with us. We received a "Flat Stanley" in the mail last week from our friend, Emma, who was a student at the preschool and the daughter of a good friend. Flat Stanley is a children's book about a little boy who gets caught up in a kite and goes on all kinds of adventures. (At least that's how I remember the story.) It is a very popular project among the early elementary crowd. After reading the book in class, the students get to color a Flat Stanley and mail it, along with a journal, to someone for a visit. I remember Sam did this project in 2nd Grade and his Flat Stanley went to the ranch and had all kinds of adventures with Chip's parents. Our Flat Stanley arrived looking as much like Emma as it could, despite the fact it's a boy. He has red hair like Emma and very pretty pink and purple clothing with little swirls drawn all over it. She wrote Flat Emma on the back, in case we were to mistake it for a boy :) So far, Flat Emma went with us to a rock n rollin' time at The Genesis Project on Friday night (I'll explain about that in another blog entry....), to my mom's on Saturday night, and will be going to both Jr. High and High School this week.

Well, time to do more Chemistry. Curiously, I always find myself blogging when I have Chemistry to do...hmmmm..wonder if there's anything to that? I do have to say that I'm feeling much better about my status in that class after the professor sent out an e-mail to all of us saying that the average on the last test was 70%. That was very good news for me and much needed boost as I'm well above that and comforted to know that I'm not the only one struggling!