My Happy Birthday

Michelle made me a to-die-for chocaholic birthday cake.

She also treated all of us girls to a delicious lunch of my choosing; I chose Panera for their delicious soups, salads, and sandwiches.  The girls and I both enjoyed our lunch a lot! 

While we were there,  a couple of people suggested that she start selling her cake by the slice... it would be a BIG HIT! 

After lunch, Aunt Michelle, the girls, and I headed to Homestead Farm for a field-trip.  Aunt Michelle was my "mother's helper" and was a great help especially when Jillian had to use the potty at the porto-potty!

We saw an adorable calf.

Little Anna was a lot less frightened by the animals this time around!   

Jillian got to hold a freshly laid egg at the farm.

We saw turkeys and goats.

Then, we all took a hay-ride.

When we made it to the fields, Jillian had a hard time picking the perfect pumpkin. Our tour guide (also a farmer at homestead) was a big help. He also cut the vines for us when we made our pick.

A photo of all the happy kids with their new pumpkins.

It was a beautiful way to celebrate my fall birthday.

Then, that evening, three ladies and myself went to 16 Handles during AWANA.

It was a sweet way (both the friends and the yogurt!) to end the evening.  :-)

My sis-in-law, Beth, sent me this great homeschooling book (along with my absolute, favorite kind of gift card, AMAZON). She also wrote a encouraging note: "Happy Birthday Lauren, we are impressed with how hard you are working on homeschooling your precious children. Many of our homeschooling friends highly recommend this book! We hope you enjoy it!  We love you, Nate and Beth

This gift and note really meant A LOT to me, because honestly, there are still days, I don't know what I am doing with homeschooling this year. But I feel extremely blessed to have the love and support of family as we do it. :-)

That same day, the girls received gifts from our friends in North Dakota (via hand delivery by friends who had just visited ND)!  The girls love their matching pajamas and their dolls match too!   I got my own plate of yummy peanut butter, chocolate chip blondies from Trisha!  I was told that the plate was entirely for me, I didn't have to share with anyone if I didn't want to.  But I was nice (both to my waistline and the other little ones in the house) and shared anyway, :-) 

The next evening, we had a phone double-date with our friends the Pull's and we played a game of Agricola on the computer.

It is by far the longest phone conversation I have ever had in my life. In the end, we were on speaker phone for 4 hours.
Here is Brad pretending to concentrate heavily on the screen.

Here I am, exhausted at the end of the day (did I mention it was really hot at the farm?), waving to my friends in North Dakota (for this photo)! "Hi Trisha!  Hi Joe! We miss and love you guys!"

The end time was actually after midnight (not pictured in the clock above) and the scores were the closest we have seen in all of our playing time together. The lack of sleep we got that night was well worth it! We had so much fun and it was an incredible "date idea" by really sweet, thoughtful friends!!!