August Birthdays... in October?

So for those of you who don't know, my birthday is in August. If you find yourself asking, "Why is he writing about it in October?" then you are in the right place...cause I'm gunna tell ya. Here's what brought this up. In mid-August I was thinking of what I wanted to do for my birthday and came up with the idea to take a good friend of mine, Blake, and his significant other, Dani, to a nice sit down dinner for their birthdays, which are also in August. A Double Date if you will..(August really is the best birthday month. ;) I may be a little bias though...hehe)  Since Laura and I moved to Paradise we haven't taken as many opportunities to venture out and spend time with friends as we would like. So, I decided that a fun night out treating some friends to a dinner would be a great way to celebrate our birthdays. Now, given our financial situation, I was a bit worried how we would swing such an event. Given that it was my birthday I was hoping for a nice restaurant over fast food. After all, who wants to go to Taco Bell for their birthday. Ok, I might. But that's beside the point. Moving on.....So in trying to figure out how to support our event I was blessed with two dinner coupons to a nice Chinese BBQ restaurant that I happen to like "Hulas" here in Chico. I received them as a birthday gift from some very loving family, which I will tell you more about in a later post. Then, not more than a week later I received two more of the same coupons for the same restaurant for being the employee of the quarter at work. Needless to say I was feeling very blessed as I knew someone was granting me my birthday wish. Thank you Heavenly Father!! So, now I had the funds, the plan and the people. All that was missing was to plan a date and rock the night away. HAHA.....not so fast. Here's the deal. My friend Blake that I mentioned, you know, the one I wanted to take out for dinner, the one that I planned this whole event around....yes...that Blake. Well, I didn't take into account that he has one of those magnetic personalities that everyone he knows wants to be around, including me. He is also a recovering weekend worker from a past life as a Target employee. He worked almost every weekend, at least one day if not both every weekend. Once he got outa there it was his mission to have as much fun on the weekends as possible and enjoy every minute. He also loves to travel. Being such.....he ALWAYS has something planned on the weekends. I tried and tried to nail him down to a date and finally, through nothing short of a miracle and a cancellation of one of his weekend romps, we set a date. So, last Friday, Oct 16th we went to Hulas and enjoyed some of the finest Chinese BBQ that Chico has to offer. MMMMM!! Blake and I ate ourselves into a coma while our beautiful matching puzzle pieces sat there making fun of how dorky we were. We know they love us. After Hulas we walked to Target and bought some ice cream and went back to Blake's house where we enjoyed Cookies'n'Creamy goodness and an episode of Glee. (Blake got me hooked and I wanted Laura to see what it was about) All in all, it was a great evening full of laughs and stories. Fun was had by all. Unfortunately, we only took one picture. But if you look closely you can see the strain on the guy's faces as we would have rather been wheeled out after having eaten so much. No complaints though. We would both do it again in a heartbeat. So there you have it. My birthday in October in all of its glory. It really was a memorable one. Thanks go out to Blake, Dani and my wonderful wife Laura for making it a great evening.

Sunday......A Day of Rest??

So it seems that Sundays have turned into the busiest days of the week. Church, meetings, FHE (Family Home Evening. We do it on Sunday mornings since this is the time we have the girls up with us.), Family Counsel, Choir Practice, more meetings, 2.5 hours of prep for church (remember I live with 3 girls).....did I mention meetings? Man, where is the much needed rest. I must say that Laura has been very kind and letting me sleep until almost 9 am on ocassion after staying up doing homework on Saturday evenings. I know...amazing. At least that's as long as she can keep Melia out of the bedroom. She is so cute, but the relentless WAKE UP, GET UP DADDY, GET OUT OF BED, IT'S TIME FOR BREAKFAST, COME ON, before I even get my eyes open can be a bit overwhelming. Oh well. Gotta love her. She has been putting in the effort to try a gentle carress first before jumping into the yelling at you part. We've been working with her on the etiquette of how to wake someone up. She's catching on. Well I guess we'll just have to come to terms with the fact that Sundays are not a day of "rest", just a day of off from all the other things we do during the balance of the week. I guess that's ok.

First Blog Post EVER

Wow, only took me a year to post my first blog since I created my account on blogspot. Well, let's get to it. Lately I've been feeling like keeping a journal and figured this would be the easiest way to accomplish this. As of late my ability to express myself has been limited to school papers that I've been writing. Needless to say I haven't have a chance to really think about or put on paper (or on keyboard as it were) the happenings and countless blessings I've encountered recently. I also haven't had too much time to work on increasing my talents; music, singing, sports, spiritual gifts, being a better father and husband, etc, with school and work taking most of my time. So....with all that being said, it is my hope that with this blog at least I will have a way to quickly jot down the feelings and wishes I have for the future of those talents so I can solidify my need to work on them and have some sort of accountability for them. Now, don't get me wrong. There will be plenty of time for mischief along the way and most of my posts will be nothing short of pointless. But, my hope in all of this is that will have a record of what I've learned on this journey of life and have a list of the different places my nose has led me. ;) I added some pics so you know who the main characters are in this story. Yes, I am out numbered. 3 girls and one boy. But don't worry, I'm holding my own....barely. The two little ones are awesome and Laura, well, let's just say she's amazing at this whole mommy thing. I'm excited to see what the next 8 years of marriage will bring us.