Write From Karen

Yesterday was my birthday.

I’m now 45 years old.

I don’t feel that old (most days), but I’m beginning to look it, I think.

It was a great day. My folks came over

and we had a nice, quick visit. (We don’t see each other NEARLY enough and we live in the same city! Inexcusable!)

They brought a gift for me. I always get so embarrassed when people give me gifts – I don’t know, I’ve always been that way. I mean I LOVE gifts, don’t get wrong, but I think it might be the attention thing – I don’t always like being the center of attention. (Which is really stupid because I ACT like I like being the center of attention – it’s complicated apparently).

When I opened the gift and saw what it was …

I cracked up.

They had given me a NaNoWriMo journal and “noveling” pen.

I was delighted. Not just by the gift, but because they remembered that I like to take part in the NaNoWriMo challenge every year and that they respect my enthusiasm enough to look up the website, buy these nifty items and give them to me.

It also cracked me up because I had JUST looked at these very items not a few days ago and almost bought them myself.

Do my parents know me or what?? (Thanks guys, I love you!)

After my parents left, Kevin and I went out to lunch at Panera Bread. I usually get the Bacon Turkey Bravo and the baked potato soup, but they only serve the baked potato soup on Mon, Wed, and Fri (??), so I settled for their Broccoli soup. (Which was creamy and cheesy, but almost TOO much so).

After lunch, we drove to the other side of town to see if my old cake lady was still in business. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember the name of her shop (or I would have just looked her up in the yellow pages), so we drove by and lo and behold, she was still there!

I was delighted! I used to order fancy-smancy cakes from her for the boys’ birthday parties when they were small, but I haven’t ordered cakes for them in about a decade (they prefer the cookie cakes).

However, Dude’s 18th birthday is coming up next week and I’d like to do something a little different for him this year. I asked Dude if he would like an actual birthday cake this year and he agreed. So, I plan on heading over to the cake lady’s shop this afternoon and setting something up for him. In addition, I want to order a graduation cake from her as well. (Dude will graduate in May, 2011).

I also noticed she offers cake decorating classes. Don’t laugh, but I would love to take those classes! Ever since I got hooked on “Cake Boss,” I’ve been sort of fascinated with decorating cakes.

AND, Kevin said he would take the classes with me! Ha! Actually, I think he would be a great cake decorator – he has real artistic talent and I can just imagine all of the neat stuff he’d come up with.

When we came home, I fiddled with the new phone that Kevin bought me. I had been talking about getting a new phone for months, (my old phone has an antenna – THAT’S how old it is!) but just couldn’t bring myself to actually buy one because, well, it was hard to justify.

1. I don’t use my phone all that often. (Hence the pay-as-you-go plan that I’ve had forever and works perfectly for me).

2. My old phone is working just fine. The battery is a little weaker, but nothing I can’t handle – it still holds a charge for two days straight.

3. I don’t want to pay the money for a fancy phone because again, I don’t use it very often. It just seems like a waste to me.

But Kevin got tired of hearing me talk about it, so he bought one for me.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon switching my number over and getting it set up.

I love this thing!!! It has a fold-out keyboard so now I can text on Twitter to my heart’s content. Kevin said he would laugh at me whenever I would text on my old phone (having to push the button several times to get to the desired letter).

I got my phone working shortly before it was time to pick the boys up.

When the boys got to the car, the first thing Jazz said to me was, “So guess what? I missed my band picture.”

Yesterday, the school had group picture day. All of the clubs and sports’ groups had their picture taken for the year book. The school told the kids what time they were to report to the auditorium and left it up to the kids to get there on their own. (In other words, they didn’t call them down over the speaker).

Jazz said he was taking his Biology test and totally lost track of time. He was concentrating so much on his test, that the time he was supposed to report for the picture came and went.

I was heart broken!! This means that the band picture in the year book? Won’t have Jazz in it. This is especially sad because Jazz LIVES for band – it’s what makes school tolerable for him so to not be in the picture well … *sigh*

He was a little upset that he missed it. But, I told him that it was really cool that he was so focused on doing well on his test, that he lost track of time. That tells me how serious he’s taking school.

I just hope he did well on his test.

We all went out for sandwiches last night. I just couldn’t bring myself to pick a restaurant where we would end up spending $50 dollars on food. I just hate that! I would much rather spend our money on fun stuff, and food is just not that fun.

We went out to Orange Leaf for ice cream afterward. The shopping center had just opened up a computer store, so we all went in to check it out and the sales guy showed us a super-hyped up gaming computer that the boys fairly salivated over. We had a really good time talking about the pros and cons of buying that computer and Kevin and I encouraged the boys to save up their money to buy it someday. (That would be the perfect place for Dude to get a job – it’s down the street from our house and I think the thought of being paid to be around computers and to talk about computers all day REALLY appealed to Dude. We’ll see what happens after he graduates).

We came home and played “Settlers of Catan.” We just LOVE that game. We have had the best family moments playing that game and last night was no exception. I ended up winning, which was fitting since it was my birthday. Ha!

I ended up ordering an expansion pack for the game last night. This will extend the game and give it several new elements to contend with. We’ll play it a few times before Thanksgiving and then challenge some family members (who are even into the game more than we are!).

I really enjoyed my day. It was so fun to hang out with my guys and the boys are old enough now that we have real conversations. They were both in pretty good moods and we did a lot of talking and joking around, which is precious to me as it doesn’t happen very often now that they are teenagers and like to keep to themselves.

God has truly blessed me with an awesome family. 🙂