I was SO EXCITED!!!  Not only do I love it (and, well, anything Apple), but my husband came up with it ALL ON HIS OWN!  I was shocked, surprised, thrilled.

I got this, because I have this:

And, because I have him, I have these:

Thank goodness, I didn’t get this:

(Which is what the running store employee suggested Dan get me since I’ve signed up for an 8K).

Dan and I rarely go out, because, well… we have FIVE kids.  Finding a sitter isn’t easy or cheap.  And, with one of those FIVE kids being a baby, we just don’t have a lot of good options.  Dan and I can barely handle them all – we can’t really expect a teenager to survive an evening over here.  (Without a police presence, anyway.)

So, when people started talking about the school’s big dinner/dance/auction this year, we enlisted Dan’s family to help us out.  Unfortunately for them, our night out came on the heels of the biggest blizzard Chicagoland has seen in quite some time.  Oops!  Thankfully, though, Dan has a brave family and Illinois does a good job plowing their roads fairly quickly.

Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Anne and cousins Joey, Abby and Michael all arrived on Friday, soon after the kids got out of school.  The dog ran off (probably at the sight of all those kids at once), but came back quickly enough.

On Saturday, with all the extra help around, I was able to get my nails and hair done with a girlfriend.  It was spooky, being away from the kids that long on a Saturday afternoon!

Then, on Saturday evening, after unclogging the toilet and throwing some frozen pizzas into the oven for the kids, we got dressed and headed out.

We had a wonderful, wonderful time!  Thank you – Grandma, Grandpa, Anne, Joey, Abby and Michael!!!

To double ease the pain, my dear husband flew our entire family out to Utah so we could celebrate by attending his brother’s wedding.  Nothing like getting someone else to pay for the party!  It seems to be a tradition in Dan’s family to double up on celebrations.  This is the second wedding/birthday combo and there are numerous shared birthdays.  Makes it easier to remember significant dates.  I guess.

Truthfully, with all the packing to do, clothing to buy and fretting to do, I almost forgot about turning The Big 4-0 27.

We flew out on the busiest travel day of the year (What idiot made those reservations?!?  Oh, yeah.  Me.) and headed toward what was supposed to be one of the worst snow storms in years.  With five children.  On a flight leaving too early to serve alcohol to the stressed-out parents.

Things couldn’t have gone smoother.  We flew out of the smaller airport and left early enough to avoid the crowds.  Despite our large party of mostly crazed young’uns, we made it through security quickly and to our gate in plenty of time.  The kids were thrilled to be on the airplane and were entertained all through take off.  Andrew did wonderfully until he was woken from his nap by siblings asking for snacks, electronics, toys and books.

We were welcomed to Utah by Uncle Tom and several inches of snow.  This, too, was entertainment for the kids, as we hadn’t seen snow yet this year.

So as not to drone on and on, I’ll give you the highlights of our trip:

Thursday: Early to Uncle John’s (the groom) for family pictures.  Oh, what FUN!!!  There were only 31 of us for the picture and who posed the most difficulty?  Yes.  The Chicago Branch.  First Sam was being difficult.  Then Luke got mad and ran off.  Then it was back to Sam.  Things deteriorated at lightening speed.  Picture taking and our family just don’t go well together.  I guess I should be happy no one was dropped this time.  Of course, the lack of food and drink prior to the photo shoot probably added to the situation.  But, there was NO WAY any of my clan were going to eat or drink before a picture!

Once the pictures were finished and the eating (kids) and drinking (adults) began, all was well again.  We were joined by even more family throughout the day (I think the total was over 60) and had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day meal.

Friday: the whole crew was back at it again, eating and drinking.  This time at Cucina Toscana.  The 22 children in attendance got their own tables, fru-fru drinks and a special meal, while the adults enjoyed wine, more wine, delicious food, and more wine.

Saturday: we celebrated my birthday by having breakfast out with our family and Tom’s family, which was a nice surprise.  The kids all helped Aunt Cami bake me a cake, and we ate that for lunch before heading to the hotel in Ogden so we could begin preparing for the wedding.

The hotel was wonderful.  We had a corner suite that overlooked downtown Ogden.  We had a front row seat to the annual Santa Run and got some pics in before heading out to the Snow Basin Ski Lodge to witness the ceremony, of which Maria was a part (flower girl) and Dan was a part (groomsman).

Despite leaving in plenty of time (yes – I was able to get everyone showered and dressed!) we held up the wedding because the brand-new GPS sent us the *&$%#ed up way we chose to take the long, winding, snowy route through the mountains to get to our destination.

The lodge was beautiful, as was the bride, and the ceremony went off without a hitch (despite my loud, restless little boys).

We even managed to take MORE pictures relatively painlessly.  (Special thanks goes out to Andrew for waiting until after the wedding photos to dump beer all over the both of us.)

Unbelievably, I was happy-birthday-ed throughout the evening.  It was nice (but may have been nicer if everyone could have just said “Happy Birthday,” instead of – too loudly for my taste – “Happy 40th Birthday!!!”)  The bride and groom – ever so thoughtful – even had a gift for me.

The party went late into the night (for us) and four out of five of our little ones fell asleep as soon as we loaded them into the car.

The next morning, we woke to beautiful snow falling outside our huge hotel room windows.  Lots of it.  Lukie eyed the mountain of wedding gifts that we’d stored for the newlyweds and said to me, “You sure got a lot of birthday presents!”  Haha.  Luckily for John and Hanalee, the kids were too tired to tear into them.

Okay… enough for now.  Look for a post about The Adventures Home later.

For our 10th anniversary, I gave Dan the book I had made.  I had found pictures for each of the years we’d been married and was also able to describe where we’d been and what was happening during those times in our lives.

I, of course, had intended to keep it up.

Ha.

So, when Dan found the book last night, we got a good laugh looking at some of the pictures and then I decided that I would up date it.  I had three anniversaries to add.  Should be a cinch.

During Sam’s naptime this afternoon, I got out my external harddrive and started sifting through pictures from the last three years.  As I did this, I became more and more depressed.  There were some terrific pictures of our kids.  And of other people’s kids.  And our house.  And a couple of baptisms.  But very, very, pathetically few of Dan and me.  Virtually none, as a matter of fact!

This tells me a few of things:

1.  We need to make it so we focus as much on ourselves as a couple as we do on our children.

2.  We need more people to come visit so they can take some pictures for us. (You are welcome any time!)

3.  We need to either start taking some self-timed photos, goofy hold-out-the-camera-in-front-of-you-photos, or relinquish the camera to the kids once in a while.

As much as I dread having my picture taken this late in my pregnancy, Dan is going to come home to a photo shoot today.  While I managed to find pictures for most of the years that we’ve been married, I was unable to find ANY for this year!  Three months into 2010 and there are no pictures of us together.

Pathetic.

I’d show you all the pics I have in the book so far, but my scanner won’t work without ink (whatever) and the kids have used up all my ink, printing crap from NickJr.com.  So… here are the few I can show you:

1997

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2008

2009

Dan sent me a text today asking me to add Raiders of the Lost Ark to our Netflix queue.

“You’ve NEVER seen it?!?” was my reply.

He hasn’t.  And, apparently some of his coworkers are making him feel like an anti-American because of it. I agree with them.

How did this get past me?!?  If my mom had known, I don’t think she’d have let me marry him.

Well, I’ve added it to the queue.  Better late than never, I suppose.

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In other news, I am whooping for joy this afternoon!  During kindergarten pick up my newest Uppercase Living recruit (and nanny to my children’s friends) walked over to my van to chat with me. Despite my Little Boys constant interrupting screams, laughs and general boy noises, she suggested I call her if I ever need a sitter.  “I love your boys – they remind me of mine,” she told me.  (She has 5 grown children of her own.)  “Are you SERIOUS?”  I asked her.  “You know I have FOUR kids, right?”

She laughed and told me that she was, in fact, serious.  And that she was available in the evenings.

Whooowhoooo!  I cannot contain my pure joy at this invitation!  Dan and I haven’t had a date since arriving in Chicagoland.  There are some young neighborhood teens that babysit, and one did sit for us when we attended teacher conferences.  But, we made sure the sitter had very little to do (i.e. all kids were bathed, jammied and ready for bed.)  And, we rushed to get home.

It’s not that I don’t trust the teens, but they are young and my four children (as you may know from reading this blog) can be a handful.  Even Dan has trouble sometimes.  I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking someone so young to feed everybody, get them in their jammies and get them all to bed.  Plus, I wouldn’t feel right staying out very late.  A date isn’t much fun if you’re staring at the clock, you know?  And we’d love to be able to take the time to go into the city.

Well, our life, it seems, is about to change!  I guess I can’t state it for a fact until we’ve actually had her sit for us, but it looks like Joyce may very well be TBBITW Part II.

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Finally, you’ve got to read this blog (in which she references this blog, which you also need to read).  It so reminded me of the “freaking” incident we had last year.  (I just noticed that I posted that in August of last year.  He hadn’t even been in school a month!)

I am sooooooo gonna start using “Shrimp.”

I know I should be thrilled to have such an honest husband. I can trust him explicitly. Even if he tried to lie, I’d be able to see it written all over his face.

Sometimes, though, a little more tact and a little less bluntness few lies wouldn’t hurt. Or, just silence. Whatever happened to, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all?” I guess that’s gone to the wayside.

A couple of weeks ago during Sunday mass, Dan moved closer to me in the pew and leaned in to whisper in my ear. I was expecting to hear something loving, or possibly a comment about someone sitting around us. However, what I heard was,

“I see some gray.”

“What?” I whispered. “What are you talking about? Oh. My. God,” I practically shouted over the reader. “You mean gray hair? On me???”

“Yep.”

Nice.

Today I got a double whammy.

I was standing in the kitchen, dressed for the Y in my new matchy-matchy workout clothes Dan bought me for Mother’s Day. He walked over, grabbed an inch (okay… three) and said,

“What’s this?”

“My fat. Thanks for pointing it out,” was my reply.

Now, I have to admit that I had a few beers drank my weight in beer over the weekend in St. Louis. But, really. Does he have to grab it?

To top it off (as if it needed topping off), Dan next asks me, as he moves the hair out of my eyes,

“Are you going to brush your hair before you go to the Y?”

“No. I’m not,” I said defiantly as I stomped off.

Sheesh. How much can a girl gray-haired, fat, uncoiffed old lady take?