One year older...

I've had just a splendid weekend! I turned 26 on Friday and I really had the best birthday - although, my special day started with a trip to the DMV to get a new drivers license. But thankfully, there was a very short wait, so we didn't have to spend very long there. :) You may be wondering why I would go to the DMV on my birthday, but that's because my Utah license finally expired that day. I've been really procrastinating getting an AZ one. But, now that I do, I can finally register to vote here. I would hate to miss out on the presidential election come November! Ben was working all day on Friday, so after our early morning DMV outing, we headed to Gilbert to spend the day with Ben's family. My wonderful mother-in-law took me shopping at my favorite clothing store and I got so many cute things - I ended up with 3 new skirts, 4 new tops, and pair of shoes. Happy day! Ben's dad and sister met up with us for lunch and then we took the kids on the double decker carousel they have there at the mall. It was pretty cool - we of course took the upper level. Becca screamed with fright when I tried to sit her on one of the horses, so she sat with me on one of the stationary benches. She loved that! Emma and Adam, of course, enjoyed riding a pink horse and elephant. :) Ben met up with us later in the day and we went out for a date while the girls stayed with grandma and grandpa. We went to Oreganos on their end of town (weirdly enough I ate at Oreganos a week earlier with friends, also as a birthday outing!) - anyway, I wanted Ben to try it because I was so impressed by their yummy food. The wait ended up being really long and our pizza took forever to come out - needless to say, we ended up rushing our waiter, boxing up our uneaten pizza, and hurrying out of there to make our 8:00 movie. Keep in mind that we got to the restaurant at 6:00, so you would think that would leave plenty of time to eat and get to our movie on time. I guess we've learned our lesson - don't eat at Oreganos if you have a movie to catch. Thankfully, we were plenty filled up from the huge salad we got. We really enjoyed the movie - we saw Get Smart (I've been really checking the movies off my list lately!). It was so funny! I love Steve Carell. He's just hillarious! I really miss The Office, btw. When we got home after driving back across town, I was TOTALLY surprised! I didn't think Ben had gotten me a b-day present yet, because he's been so busy with boards and then immediately starting up a new rotation. Well, he fooled me and when I came in the house he led me to the kitchen and the table was just filled with new kitchen stuff - like a new food processor (because the old one broke), electric griddle, waffle iron, and toaster oven, plus a few little kitchen gadgets to help with my cooking. I was so excited! I just LOVE new kitchen stuff! And the next morning Ben made us all homemade waffles for breakfast using our new waffle iron. Thanks cutie Ben! You are so fun, especially for birthdays - call me spoiled! :)

On Saturday, we went swimming at the rec center again - it was Ben's first time over there and we all loved it! The slides are fun and Emma really enjoyed going around the lazy river a couple times. Later we went to the mall, where I was able to spend the rest of my birthday money (from grandparents, and my nice sister-in-law) - I got some makeup and a couple new pairs of flip flops (I pretty much wear flip flops all year long, so they are very important!) For dinner, we used a gift card to Applebees (thanks mom and dad!) - it was yummy and the kids really enjoyed coloring on their kids menus. :) We spent Sunday evening at Ben's parents house again. We had a great dinner and then the boys helped hang their swinging bench that's been out of commission for some time now. The kids love it!

This morning Emma started swimming lessons. I tried to take a picture, but it was from pretty far away, so it's not a good one. If you click on it to make it bigger, you can see her practicing her kicking on the far right. She's so excited to be taking swimming lessons. I wanted to get her started with them last summer, but I waited too long to try to sign her up. Her lessons are every day for the next couple of weeks. The class goes from 8:30-9:00, so we get going pretty early to be out the door on time. On Tuesday and Thursdays she also has preschool at 9:30, so it's going to be race to get her showered and dressed in the locker room after swimming and then get her over to school in time. I'm feel like I'm starting to get a taste of what some moms say about living in their cars, taking kids from one thing to the next. Right now, it is tolerable because I only have one kid with classes, but what will I do when there is more?! I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

This is turning into a rather long post. So, to make it even longer, I have to share a great recipe I tried out last week for key lime pie. I got it out of the Real Simple magazine and it was so easy and I thought it was sooo yummy! Click here for the recipe. Keep in mind that the recipe calls for only 6 oz of frozen limeade concentrate. I bought a 12-oz container and almost put the whole thing in before I caught my mistake - that would have been a really intense key lime pie!