A Birthday Weekend Recap

 The month of June has flown by and it seems like the days leading up to Layla's birthday lasted only seconds.  With the stress of work and some things personally, plus a few summer time activities here and there, we are at the birthday party time and I had not really prepared.

Whenever I asked Layla what she wanted to do for her birthday, her response was always, "I don't care," or "It doesn't matter".  Then, whenever I would suggest something, she would tell me no that is not what she wants to do.  So, it became a little challenging to figure out what to do when anything and nothing was fine.

In the end, I settled on having a family birthday party on Friday night.  We couldn't really come up with an acceptable theme, so in the end it was just birthday.  After being in the office on Thursday day, I stopped by the dollar store on the way home to pick up some party decorations and then to the grocery store for the ice cream cake and the last of the food items on my list.

That night, I set out to make over 50 sandwiches to serve as dinner to our family guests.  Last weekend and through out the week I made several pounds of Italian Beef and several pounds of chicken.  Thursday night was when I was to prep all of the sandwiches.  They definitely took more time to put together than I anticipated, but seemed to be a crowd pleaser once served.  Additional food items included chips, a veggie tray and a plain garden salad (per Layla's request).  Dessert was the ice cream cake, ice cream cups and brownies.  Drinks were sodas, capri suns, lemonade and beer (of course)!

Saturday, we had a pretty low key day around the house.  I spent most of it cleaning up from the party and starting my weekend chores of laundry and housecleaning.  Saturday evening, we get ready for the All Souls festival and were about to leave to meet my parents and Chimi's for dinner when my sister called and said they were going to Nick and Elena's.  Honestly,  I didn't want to spend money on either, but I was hungry.  So we decided on the pizza and salads.

After dinner, we went to the festival for the evening.  It was laid back and the music was tolerable.  Although I didn't win any money on pull tabs, it was fun nonetheless to spend more time with my family.

On Sunday, we attended Mass at 10am.  It was very bittersweet as it would be the last Mass Father Dolan would say prior to his retirement.  It was also the last 10am Mass to ever be held at Our Lady of the Presentation.  A few weeks ago, we were informed that our Church would be closing.  That is something that has taken me a while to process.

After Mass on Sunday, we came home to have a small brunch and sing happy birthday to Layla since it was her actual birthday.  Then, I started prepping for the night.  Layla did conceded that we could go to the drive in on her birthday to see Elemental and The Little Mermaid.  This was her third time watching The Little Mermaid, but she was excited for Elemental.  

The drive in was a blast.  It was not very crowded at all!  I had planned to pick up KFC on the way out but since the box office opened an hour later than I thought, we had more time to kill.  Instead, we found ourselves at Syberg's in which Layla and I shared their chicken dinner and we all got some apps to share.  

Once we got to the drive in, it was much closer to showtime than I had planned.  I wanted the kids (Layla, Ruth and Charlotte) to play at the playground for a little while so that Laura and I could get the car and chairs set up.  However, the playground had already closed by the time we got there.  We didn't have much time at all to set up before the show started.  But, we got it done.

Both movies were great and the kids got along and cooperated well.  It was late when were leaving the parking lot and we're apprehensive that our GPS would take us through some not safe parts of East St. Louis.  So, to avoid that, we ended up driving an additional 40 minutes out of the way.  It wasn't my favorite part of the night, but glad to avoid what could be a pretty scary area, especially for two women and three girls.

Once we got home, we crashed hard and slowly made our way out of bed on Monday morning.  I had taken the day off work to recover from the weekend activities and decided that it would be the perfect afternoon to go to the lake. We definitely got out of town later than anticipated (moving slowly, long wait at the DMV and oil change place, waiting on all to get ready).  We we did finally get to the lake, the girls got permission from my sister to go to the water, but I wasn't aware or ready.  While I was trying to set up on the beach, they started hollering and I noticed the brand new flamingo float was over the line and drifting down the river.  Within minutes, the unicorn float (also brand new) was following behind the flamingo.  I was so irritated because a) I was hot and trying to set up and b) they were brand new and they couldn't have just waited a few minutes.  Additionally during this time we were trying to set up a new canopy that was just not cooperating with us.  I finally gave up on it and threw in on the ground.  I started to pack it up while complaining that I was ready just to pack up all of stuff and go back home.  It was definitely not one of my finest moments of the day.

I am super proud of the girls for letting the floats go as opposed to trying to swim after them.  Once I cooled off a little, I was able to tell them this.  It was much better to lose some Amazon floats than to lose them.

The day ended up being okay with just some minor annoyances.  I forgot how taxing it is to keep and eye on little kids in the water.  I am definitely out of practice there!

Once we did finally start to pack up, Charlotte noticed a lady getting ready to take a small canoe out.  She politely asked her if she thought she might be able to canoe out to get their rafts that had washed up on the bank further down the lake.  It was like they were staring at us and mocking us from the side bank the entire day we were on the beach.  The lady was kind enough to try and with a few attempts and some big effort on her part, she rescued the floats for the girls just in time for us to call it a day.  She really was an angel sent to help!

On the way home, we made a quick little detour to get ice cream at General Custards.  We were pleased to see they had a drive through so we didn't have to unload everyone from the car again.  The frozen custard was a big hit and after the sugar rush, the kids crashed for about an hour on the car ride home.  

Once home, we unloaded and I gave Alex a hug as he was headed out on the road to drive back to Michigan for the next few weeks.  With Alex back on the road and Layla settled in for the night, I took a nice long shower and got myself ready for work the next day.  I did need to be in the office, so a little more prep took place than usual.  

As is always the case, I could have used just one more day off to truly do nothing and recover.  I'm not very good at allowing myself that time.  But, it does seem I am good at having a fantastic birthday celebration.