… with my daughter!!

Aubree and I had a nice night out by ourselves at the mall this evening as a birthday treat. I have to say that I think I may prefer having her as a date, too. She’s talkative, she doesn’t eat much (cheap date!), and we both like the same girly things. :o) She rocks!

Anyway, she wanted to build a “bear” (she chose a Dinosaur) at Build-A-Bear and then we had a little dinner as well. I wasn’t counting on eating out, we haven’t done so since she was maybe 9 months old (in a sit down fashion), but she was hungry so I gave it shot - and it turned out to be a lot of fun. Not fantastic for weight loss, but yeah. She was SO good. I may try taking her out for ‘one on one’ time more often, though not TOO often. It just costs way too much money in the end and I feel guilty spending it. Guilt and responsibility really ruin fun, you know?

And of course, before all of that grand excitement we had some birthday fun at home. Cake, gifts and lots of messes to be made with the new loot. I’ll be picking dried playdoh out of the carpet for the next week.

I just can’t believe my baby girl is 4! It just doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. *sighs* It seems like it was just last year that I was blogging about her birth and posting those first photos. Someone please slow time down for me, ok?

Why was I excited to get out of here this afternoon?!

ARRRGH!

I seriously don’t know how the people here can even see through their windshields with their heads so far up their asses. That is some talent, I swear. I’m a stickler for rules. I adore traffic laws. I follow them. I cuddle them and pat them on the head lovingly. But the people here just do not .. at all. Speed limits? What the hell is that?! At one point I tried to keep up with traffic just to see how fast everyone else was going, on a 45 mph street. The end result was 60 mph!! Seriously .. no, thanks. I’ll be the old lady in the slow lane. The rest of them can just go around me because I would be the loser who gets the ticket and I’d rather spend my money on other things. It’s a good thing I was out without the kids - they would have a whole new vocabulary to use if they had overheard my trucker’s mouth. I hate people who speed ahead, cut me off and then just end up in front of me at a red light forcing me to slam on my breaks. I’ll never understand that. It’s like .. hello! The reason I was SLOWING down was because of the red light .. jackass.

Anyway …

After my nervous breakdown I ended up in Party City where the registers just happened to be down. Lovely. I had to wait for them to be able to ring me up, and then wait for balloons to blown up AND I had the pleasure of having “loud cell phone talker woman” right behind in me in line. I do believe she called just about everyone she knew while we were waiting. I don’t get that. But then again I don’t call anyone. Ever, and if I do I do it in the car on the side of the road.

Then the cake .. I need to read up on sheet cake sizes because it’s really small. I wish I would have ordered the next size up. It was listed as being able to serve 16-18 people and I thought that would be fine since the hubby is a P-I-G when it comes to cake. Yeah .. if you give them each a fork full it may feed that many, but there’s no way it would in our family. Maybe we’re all a bunch of piggies? But it is adorable even if the tiny little thing cost me almost $30!! ugh.

Thankfully there was a Starbucks in the grocery store so I grabbed myself a dose of sugar/caffeine before heading home and almost getting hit in the parking lot by some idiot who was cutting through the lanes instead of following traffic. Now I’m home, the kids are outside with Daddy and I’m waiting for my blood pressure to return to normal. We wanted to take the kids to Kangaroo Jac’s in Chesapeake tomorrow night for some playtime but I’m seriously rethinking that. I don’t know if my poor heart could take the anxiety attack that Friday night traffic would cause me! No, it’s nothing like New York City travel, I’m sure .. but it’s bad enough!

I actually have some child free plans for the day, beyond my normal routine and that excites me! As soon as the hubby gets home (hopefully early) I’ll be taking off for a little bit of shopping and errands. A trip to Party City to buy balloons. Massive amounts of balloons, actually. We have a birthday tradition of waking up to a ton of balloons on your birthday so I have to make that happen for tomorrow’s big day. Aubree has been going on and on about it all week long so I can’t disappoint. I may pick up a few other decorations as well all depending on what I find and what I’m in the mood to deal with. I love birthdays now that they are old enough to understand it. It’s so much more fun and everything I do is THE BEST EVER in their eyes! I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts. Someday she’ll be a bratty teenager who’s more interested in hair, makeup (acne solutions?) and boys rather than Mommy and silly birthday balloons.

Anyway, after that mission is complete I’ll stop off at Farm Fresh to pick up the girl child’s birthday cake so I don’t have to worry about getting it tomorrow. Yes, store bought. I feel sort of bad about that but she wanted a Little Mermaid cake, they have one, and it’s so much easier than standing around the kitchen all day long. Stress free is the way to be!

But before all of that I should probably think about getting myself something to munch on for breakfast and of course shower. I’m out .. :o)

I finally received a date for deposit from the IRS website’s “where’s my stimulus” thingy. Now let’s just hope it’s correct and we do see the money next Friday since I didn’t really expect it until maybe next month. I just want to get some things paid off and be breathing a bit easier for the summer. Especially with a new car payment to deal with. There will be no big spending. No diamond buying or Winter Park real estate. Nope. No economy stimulating at all. We do enough of that as it is with our regular income!

When we bought the van I wasn’t all that excited about the “stow n go” seating. I just didn’t think I would ever use it - and honestly? I probably won’t! With kids always occupying the center seats it’s just not possible. But today I realized that those little compartments are awesome for storing crap!! I went out to buy a few birthday gifts for Aubree and came home with no clue how I was going to sneak them inside. She’s always waiting at the door for me when I leave without her and we were planning on taking off for groceries shortly after my arrival home so I couldn’t leave them in the back of the van, in plain sight. My brain finally kicked in and gave me the answer - stow it! Everything fit into one of the compartments with more than enough room to spare, wrapping paper and all!

After that epiphany I went through all of our random emergency type stuff that was in the cargo area and put those in the other compartment. No more gas can rolling around with every turn.

I love it!

I had my doubts and we seriously didn’t get along too well the first couple of days but now .. ahh.. I’m falling hard. I never thought I’d be so turned on by a minivan. :o)