Birthday Weekend

It was lovely having my birthday fall on a Saturday this year. In years past, I have almost always been in school or working or both, so it was really nice to not have obligations like that.

After a somewhat leisurely morning of sort of sleeping in and eating made-from-scratch cocoa oatmeal muffins, we loaded up and headed to Delta to visit my parents. I had told Terral that's what I wanted to do for my birthday when I found out about my dad's fall.

We had a really nice weekend. We were hoping to help my parents out more than we did, but they couldn't seem to think up many jobs for us. My mom recently purged and reorganized their office, and she had me help her hang some pictures on the newly painted wall. And dad had a little job or two for Terral, but one of them was actually for our garage. My parents are so helpful to us that they help us even when we're helping them. ;)

I tried to take a picture of my belly, but it didn't quite work out. 

More belly, less head.

For some reason, dad's newly poured concrete by the garage has tilted up and is causing problems, so he had Terral dig out some gravel from underneath. Ethan was excited to get in on the digging action.

 Dad supervising. 

 My mom was really sweet and made me a pumpkin coconut cake for my birthday. She and my dad sang "Happy Birthday" to me and had me blow out a candle. Terral was absent because Ethan was crying his head off and wouldn't go to bed. He hadn't gotten a nap because he'd been too excited to play at Grandma and Grandpa's house, and he has a few teeth coming in. That's all we can figure could have caused his unusual behavior. 

 Here's a look at my dad's damaged foot. When I talked to him today, he said his ribs are not bothering him quite as much, but his foot still has him a little worried.

 It was really good to see improvement in him just while we were there. He is in a lot of pain, and he had a coughing episode at dinner that just looked excruciating, but his healing seems to be on track, and we are very grateful for that.

Sunday afternoon we had a nice surprise when the Keck family showed up. Ethan had so much fun playing with his cousins!

 Grandpa even got in on the action. :)

 We were planning on coming home Sunday, but we ended up staying that night and leaving in the morning. I

Ethan is very into letters right now, and my mom sent us home with this magnet set for him to play with. It was a very good thing to have in the car!

It was really a very nice weekend. We played games and we visited. It was good to just spend time with my parents.