Parties, Furniture, and Date Night

My mom's birthday was Friday ( here's me and the kiddos at her house), and she had us all over for a delicious meal that she insisted on preparing herself! I couldn't get her to see that it was just not right for her to cook her own birthday dinner, but gave in when I realized that it would mean a meal that I didn't have to make but got to eat. She's an excellent cook; we always had dinner parties when I was a kid and everyone raved about her food. Thanks mom, for your scrumptious birthday dinner!

Ava and Nana (my mom) doing one of Ava's favorite things- covering her appendages with stickers. She proudly wore them the rest of the night

For her birthday, I made my mom a photo book from Shutterfly. It was the first time I had made one and it turned out really nicely. You can put in text, choose your own page layouts, cover style, basically like you were a publisher. I'll definitely do it again.

This is the other thing we did this weekend. It's an old pie safe, which had it's original milk paint finish until a now- deceased family member of Marvin's decided to give it a surprise makeover. It was in Marvin's house when he was a kid, and his parents were not thrilled when they came home and found it with it's newly painted and newly de-valued exterior. Since it's virtually ruined as a collector's piece, I"m giving it a makeover of my own so it will fit in with our new office. This is the "before" shot, hopefully by the end of the week I"ll have an "after" shot...

Marvin also surprised me with a night out on Saturday. He had his mom come up and sit with the kids (she actually took them to the park for a picnic, which they loved) and we went out to dinner and a movie. I can't remember the last time we did that and it was really nice. We went to a new restaurant that had just opened and had some nice carrot cake for dessert, and then went and saw Will Smith's new movie, Hancock. It's about a super hero with a bad attitude and a drinking problem.

I can definitely relate to the super hero with a bad attitude thing- sometimes I feel like I'm supposed to be a super hero as a mom, and it overwhelms me and I do have a bad attitude! I don't go throwing cars into buildings, though!