Happy (early) Birthday to Daddy!

Matthew's birthday is Monday, he'll be 31... I love it when his birthday rolls around because it changes our age gap from 3 to 4 years!!! I love that he's always so much older than me!!! (I rub it in too, probably always will)

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With his birthday falling on a Monday, I was kinda bummed. Mondays are always difficult in our house-- his busiest day at work by far, conference calls, meetings and cleaning up whatever business mess happened over the weekend, and of course class at night. But I guess I should be grateful... he just barely got out of a 5-day training in Boca Raton that was going to have him gone during his birthday (he moved it to October, which I guess I'm thankful for now, but I won't be in October) ANYHOW, we celebrated his birthday meal today at:

SUPER yummy!

We shared the Oriental Potstickers for an appetizer, which wasn't my top choice but it was his birthday celebration so I went along with it... (potstickers are usually too gooey for my liking) but these were absolutely fabulous! The soy sauce and sesame seeds and all the other spices really complimented each other... I highly recommend it! Matthew had the filet mignon, which he said was so good he barely needed a knife to cut it. I had a crabcake sandwich, which was huge- I had to take half home....

So taking half home left room for dessert- two decadent slices of cheesecake, of course! One was a peanut butter and fudge ripple and the other was peanut butter cup and chocolate chip cookie dough... wow, huh! A pregnant woman's dream... oh wait, we were there for him, right????!!!! :)

Now, it's all I can do to keep Kylie quiet about his birthday present, more to come later.... and he doesn't help, always trying to bribe it out of her and trick her into saying something!!! You can do it Kylie, just a few more days! :)

Family Inaugural Swim

Today was the day... I called Matthew and said Mr. Pool Man gave us the go-ahead. Matthew was golfing, so I told him too bad and that we were going in. Hehe... we waited, he was home within the hour.

Us waiting

The first few steps in... at first you think it's a little cold, but after a few seconds, it couldn't be more PERFECT!

Refreshing.

Relaxing.

And just plain fun!

If you can't find us, or don't hear from me in a while... you know where to look!

We've Got Water...

...but I bet it's cold! It took 12+ hours to fill up. It was almost like having a newborn baby, Matthew set his alarm for nearly every hour last night to wake up and go check on the water. We had instructions to turn it off when the water hit the middle of the tiles. It looks fabulous, it's taunting us right now because they are chlorinating it and the special cleaning system we bought is working it's magic... so we must wait.

Today was also really nice because we got rid of this:

And got this:

The button on the sliding glass door is the most annoying (but useful) thing. You have 7 seconds to open and shut the door and push the reset button, which is specifically up high. Difficult when with two adults (one being slightly big in the mid section), two little girls, and a dog all trying to get out the door/push the reset button/ and shut the door in 7 seconds. It makes a terrible noise if you miss the time limit or if you don't push the button SO you know if you're kids are outside and shouldn't be. It's really a great safety tool, but we went ahead and did the safety fence with a lock. And on top of that, with our security system... anytime a door or window opens, our alarm system control pad (both upstairs and down) speaks to us like on an intercom and tells us, "fault garage door." Meaning the garage door opened, or "fault master bedroom window"... you've got the picture.

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Mr. Pool Man says that the chemicals and whatnot are doing their thing and we can go in Saturday (maybe sooner) so it will have a few days to warm up from the nice Vegas sun... I'M READY! On top of that, we sold the Universal Gym for our asking price and that leaves Saturday morning too.... I'm getting my backyard back!!!! YEAH!!!!

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This picture I just thought was funny... Battle of the Dirt Devils, mine and theirs. My girls have a thing for vacuums. In fact, on Sundays in nursery when they clean up, Kacey's usually assisting a Nursery Leader holding the vacuum. I usually have to "hide" as I vacuum or do little jobs just so I can get it done... but what ends up happening is everyone has to have their turn with the vacuum.

Saturday & Sunday

I bought Kylie a little play money set. She already knows all her coins- the girls milk my parents for all their change everytime they come over to our house. And my dad happily empties his pockets as long as they correctly name each coin. (He did the same thing with me, amazing how keeping it is great incentive to learn!) There is a house minimum of 10 coins per girl (my girls are demanding) and if you don't have the 20 to pass around, their tempers go flaring! :) Kacey's right about half the time too when identifying her coins- obviously the penny is the easiest, and dimes are called "diamonds"... the nickels and quarters cause Kacey some problems. But Kylie's got it down! So, I got Kylie this play money set so she could not only practice coins, but also learn dollars. She learned fast.... (Papa time for the big bucks please) This is SOOO my girl, it kept her content for an hour! Sunday Morning prior to church.
Sunday morning family picture.
Love this one, "Where's the baby?" (just a few weeks left)