Happy Birthday!!!

Blake turns 30 today!!! Which means that we are now both in our 30s. For 6 1/2 more months. Then one of us isn't in their 30s anymore. Let's not talk about it.

I don't have pictures of the birthday boy today. I should later. But here is a picture of my cake-baking assistant.

No, that's not a goatee. Yes, the cake is chocolate.

We're still here

Just haven't been doing that much. I got my hair done on Saturday. Highlights and lowlights, which is a first for me. It looks good. It looked really good the day I came home. Now that I am in charge of fixing it, it just looks like a brighter version of how I usually look.

I have been super lazy this week, since James caught himself from falling Sunday by grabbing and hanging onto my neck. My neck was not designed for that. Today was the first day I felt pretty much back to normal.

I also found out that my old dentist, Dr. Moan, really wasn't so good. We suspected, but he always had the newest technology and the coolest office, so we were lured back. My TMJ appliance was too loose to wear, so I went to a dentist to check on it. Who sent me to someone else. Both of them confirmed that the one I'd been wearing has damaged my bite. Of course, the specialist wanted to charge $6500 for a different set of appliances and then 2 years of braces. I looked at information online -- which I probably should have done 10 years ago -- and found that it is not recommended to do any of these things, and that I shouldn't have worn anything for longer than 6 months. So, we'll see how everything goes not wearing anything. And I will just plan on having difficulty eating sandwiches from now on.

That's really how the week has gone. Nothing exciting. We'll have to remedy that!

Across the street

One of the first things I heard on the radio when I woke up this morning was that Joe Biden was going to be in town today. Then they said the location, which happens to be right across the street from our apartment. I took this picture from the door to our building. I know, it is not terribly exciting, but I took it from the door to our building! I thought that was pretty cool.

Larry called at 7am, offering to watch James if I wanted to go see Biden. My first thought was that it would be fun, and nice to have seen both Biden and Obama. Which led to my second thought of what a pain it was to wait . . . and wait . . . and wait to see Obama. And Hillary. And Kerry. So I said no, thank you. And changed my mind 15 minutes later, by which time Larry didn't get the message. So, when James and I were going out later, we drove by and listened to a little of the speech over the speaker system. It was after 10:30. The doors opened at 7:30, and the officer said people were in line early and it filled quickly. So, not going turned out to be a very good thing.

So, then James and I had a good time at Bass Pro. I tried to steer him in directions of live fish, waterfalls, and such, and away from things like bears pouncing on deer. His favorite part was the Kids' treehouse. It didn't look like much to me, just a hollow plastic tree with 3 stuffed birds in it that you could put on a ledge. But James and the 4-year-old girl in there LOVED it. And, we saw them setting up Santa's workshop. Santa arrives in a week. James wants to tell him that he wants candy. Last year he wanted a cookie, but I think the recent Halloween festivities have influenced him. I want for Santa to bring him a toy kitchen, to which Blake said, "Um, Heather, he's a boy." But, he thought the kitchen I chose was suitably masculine, so we shall see.

On Saturday, Larry and Debbie had a hot dog roast, which was a lot of fun (except for the anxiety of having an accident-prone 3-year-old boy around fire). Blake took this great picture of James with his great-grandmother.

And, since I am going backwards in this post, here are some pictures from Halloween. James really enjoyed being a giraffe, and was the only one of the grandsons who didn't have to be bribed by Larry to put their costume back on for a picture, since he was still happily wearing it. He got it out again today. Although he also tried to knock on the neighbor's door and say "trick or treat".

I'm not completely sure, since he told me about it later, but I think this was the lady who called Blake "mean" because he was hovering over James and telling him to be careful. Apparently she didn't see when we were across the street and he almost took a tumble down someone's very steep concrete steps.

Finally, none of these pictures show it as clearly as I would like, but we all found it pretty amusing that one of the major characteristics of the giraffe costume was a very large, very padded butt. Didn't notice that about giraffes before.