the weekend birthday

Today is the first day in quite a while that we haven't had any friends or family staying with us and we are finally adjusting back to regular life. I miss everybody tremendously (the babysitting/ entertainment/housekeeping help was wonderful!) but it is also so nice to have everything back to normal.
And here is the long awaited pic of my haircut. Yes, I know that you can't see it very well- but it was the only shot of me that I liked- and we all know that I DON'T post pictures of myself that I find unflattering. You'll have to wait until later to see more. I am more fond of the cut now that I'm used to it and am better at doing it. It forces me to actually do it more often- and it's much easier really. The only downside is that I have to bobby pin it when I go running or wear it up- but hopefully I outgrow that stage pretty quickly.

I've been so busy the past seven weeks (can you believe that Ike is SEVEN weeks old tomorrow!!!) that I haven't been keeping up on my daily posts- but I think things are calmed down to a level at which I can return to my everyday blogging. I was going to post last night but we ended up finishing off my unfinished birthday festivities!! I think that the best part of a weekend birthday is that it sort of becomes a two day celebration!

Kent basically took every baby night shift this weekend (ike seems to have hit a growth spurt and is getting up twice at night instead of once) and I got lots of fabulous sleep! Yesterday after church he made dinner- cleaned it up- got the kids ready and into bed- and we got to watch Twilight. Even though I am not a fan of the books- I still wanted to see the movie adaptation.

Also-my friend (and wonderful visiting teacher) sherri brought me an entire GINORMOUS bowl of my favorite snack EVER. Thank you sooooo much sherri. Chocolate chex caramel crunch. I have to post about it because I think everybody needs to know about it. It really may be my favorite snack of all time. The recipe is here. It's got to be the brown sugar, butter, and chocolate that make this stuff so insanely delectable. In fact- it is so good that I packaged up the rest this morning into zip lock bags and gave them to Al, Roxanne, and Ellen (our wonderful office/maintenance people) so I couldn't eat it all. I really have no self control when it comes to these types of things and I'm still not fitting comfortably into my favorite jeans- so I had to remove the temptation altogether.

Zeb is still soooo good with Ike and seems to be doing pretty well with everything. I'm trying so hard to remember that he isn't even two years old yet- and that I can't expect perfect behavior at all times. He's got some great new nursery leaders that have helped tremendously in getting him to be happy. He still throws his fits- but we are learning lots of ways to prevent and diffuse them. He LOVES to help me clean around the house and is ALWAYS singing the "clean up- clean up! everybody everywhere" song. Let's hope he continues loving to clean and follows in his father's footsteps and NOT mine. Kent is such an efficient speedy cleaner and actually enjoys it to an extent. I still loathe cleaning of every sort.
Here's the little rugrat with his quasimodo eye.
It's the opposite eye- but don't you think they look pretty similar?