Birthday Recap

So yay today is my birthday. I had to work and go into the office, so it was an extra early day. Hmm, maybe that just means I get to enjoy more hours in my birthday?

When I go into the office, I get there by 7, usually work through lunch and leave by 3:30 or 4. Usually. When you work in a job like I do, you don't go by the clock but by how much needs to get done before you leave.

I had a few things that were burning that absolutely had to get out today before Thanksgiving, especially since I won't be reachable at all for work for most of tomorrow (more on that in tomorrow's post). It was almost five before I sent out the last of the emails that I needed to. Right before I hit send, my cell rang.

I missed the call but could see it was my husband. I tried him back but got his voicemail. Then I tried my mom, but it went straight to her voicemail (she was watching the wee ones after picking them up from daycare and preschool). I tried my dad. After five rings, he picked up. Phew! They aren't all avoiding me.

I reassure my dad that it's been a long day but that I'm finally on my way home when my husband beeps back in. I grab that call and find out that he's almost home (yay!) with pizza (what!?). He'd decided that we would get Chicago-style pizza tonight and picked it up without checking to see whether I'd left for home yet. You know, because he always gets home around five on Mondays. I know, that didn't make sense to me either, but whatever. Whoo, my birthday dinner is cold pizza! Gotta love that hour plus commute in rush hour.

And my presents? My husband gave me one last night. It's a new heart rate monitor. I'm really curious about how hard I'm actually working, and I know the ones at the gym are notoriously off on the treadmills. Plus, I want to see how hard my yoga and belly dancing (shut up, don't laugh) classes really are. And tonight I got my second present. It's a new lid to the Cuisinart. The old one cracked right through from grating too much good, hard cheese.

Yep. I got two presents. Both are items I mentioned last week when my husband finally started thinking about my birthday. His excuse? I don't want to go overseas because of the dollar right now, so he didn't want to plan a trip somewhere. Oh, and he didn't have a chance to go to the new pilates studio yet to get me a few passes to use the new Cadillac machines (or whatever they're called). Oh, and I only gave him like five things off the top of my head last week, and he needs to save some for Christmas. OH! And he doesn't know what a BPA-free bottle means, so he can't find one.

Next time? I'm telling my husband I want these for my birthday. Go check 'em out -- Mama Kat's giving them away even! The blogger who makes these has some real talent in her jewelry making!

So let's sum up the yuck to get it out of my system: really early morning, 10 hours of work, 2 nonpersonal presents, and cold pizza for dinner. Wheee!

Now for the cool things:

When I got home, there was something wedged between the screen door and the main door. It was a package of chocolates with a handmade card from a friend of mine who lives FORTY-FIVE minutes away and her daughter. I almost cried. How sweet was that?

My dad made his very first cake EVER today. For me. Apparently no one else could find the time to do anything about a cake, so he sucked it up. Granted, it was a white cake from a box, but he made homemade frosting. And he wrote "Happy Birthday Mom" (as in from the wee ones) on the cake in chocolate chips. And he filled it with raspberry jelly. How sweet was that?

Ok ok ok, so I have to share his frosting making story:

He tried to mix the butter and milk, but they wouldn't mix together no matter how hard he tried. My mom was at bridge, so when he called, no one was answering the phone. He was on his own. He finally figured out that you had to mix in the rest of the ingredients.

Whoops, he didn't have enough powdered sugar (which he called confectioner's sugar because that's what the recipe called it, and he got all confused when I said something about powdered sugar). He made a trip to the store and finally found the powdered sugar. He also made a discovery. Did you know they sell premade frosting in little cans? What a concept. He was tempted to scrap the whole idea and just buy some frosting, but then he remembered that he had ingredients sitting in a bowl and manned up.

Well, the frosting called for a lot of sugar, so he added a little more milk. Huh. And now he discovered that the frosting was a little runny. He poured it over the cake anyway, and enough of it stuck to the cake that it looked frosted.

I really wish that I would have taken a picture, but between my dad and my husband, there's less than a quarter of it left now. The part I'm most impressed by though is that he absolutely didn't burn the cake at all. It was perfectly done! Yay, Dad!

Oh, and the best part of my day? On my way to work, Mister Man woke up and asked Daddy if he could call me to wish me a happy birthday. Just before I arrived at work, I had a very enthusiastic little boy calling to tell me how much he loved me and wishing me the bestest birthday ever. That and telling me that he's really sorry Daddy didn't take him to go shopping for me yet. At least he tossed in the yet! Of course, his perfect present is a toy dinosaur. If you recall, Daddy, Little Miss and my dad all got toy dinosaurs for their birthdays this summer.

Yeah, I may end up deleting this post, but I'll leave it up for a bit!