My birthday

A few weeks ago, Katrina came home nearly in tears because the date of their class's lock-in was on my birthday. She was completely ready to skip the lock-in, at which the entire fifth grade goes to Skyzone (a huge room filled with connecting trampolines), plays games, eats pizza, and watches a movie, so that she could stay home to celebrate my birthday. Obviously, i told her to GO, for heaven's sake, and we could easily celebrate my birthday on the second instead.

It worked out really well, anyhow, both because tomorrow is Saturday, which means that we get the whole day to have fun, and because today was Accolades at Wedgwood, and Beth was being honored for 15 years. So this way, i got to go and celebrate Beth with her today! It was all about superheroes, and everything was amazing. (Incidentally, even though she was being honored for 15 years, Beth was completely in charge of Accolades and put in a million hours into doing everything she could to make the honorees feel like they were appreciated and honored. And i think that they totally did.)

So i was there for the afternoon, and then Beth wheedled me into letting her take pictures of me ("But you always take pictures of your family on their birthdays!") even though i kept insisting that seriously. I am not photogenic. Or a good model. I am much more comfortable behind the camera.

And then Houston came home and presented me with his present, which was tickets for the two of us to go to see the Avenger's movie that opened today. "Plus dinner afterwards!" he told me gleefully. He was SO HAPPY about giving me this present. I would have had to have had a heart of stone to NOT appreciate it! He bounced the entire way to the movie theater, ran around to open the car door for me when we got there, and then bounced all the way to our theater, telling every single person he talked to that it was my birthday. (One of the guys he told asked me how old i was and was flatteringly flabbergasted when i told him. He kind of didn't believe me, and i was all, "Well, thank you! Birthday complete!")

We used Beth's popcorn buckets, and by the end of the movie, neither of us was actually hungry enough for dinner, so instead we just went to Wendy's for Frostys.

And THEN we got home and i realized that Beth was still at my house and had been cleaning and decorating and generally making me completely happy. Because she's the best.

And so then i sent the kids to bed and we spent the rest of the night with Juanito, Beth, and me piled on the couch, talking.

So it was a good birthday, even though i'm not technically supposed to celebrate until tomorrow.