Love With Reckless Abandonment: Catching Up & Birthday Recap

It's been awhile.
I leave for Uganda in 16 days...(Yes, I am freaking out just a little bit.)
At any given time my house looks like a tornado ripped through it, and if you know me this is not typical. I do this funny thing when I feel overwhelmed with stuff, I go a little catatonic and decide not to do anything... sigh. I will do better. Starting tomorrow morning because technically it's still my birthday...
26 This is the first time turning a year older has bothered me a little. Maybe it's the whole being closer to 30 thing but it feels weird.

Ok, little melodramatic, but it made me laugh.

So, for my birthday we took a little mini vacation to beautiful Peoria, AZ (insert hint of sarcasm) We stayed at a little resort through one of those time-share presentations. Pretty sweet deal.

I was not looking forward to sitting through the presentation but it turned out better than I expected. Josh took the nice, polite road where I was a little more ~~rude~~ direct. As soon as we sat down I said "we don't have any money to buy this" so you know the salesman really liked me right off the bat... they told us to expect to be there 90-120 minutes and here's my tips on how we got out of there in less than 60.

Be direct
Bring your kids but nothing else... no snacks, toys, distractions. (bored kids can be VERY distracting)
Constantly talk about God, our adoption, that NO family vacations are not a NEED, and the fact that we don't know the future so NO we don't know what we will be doing next year...
When they call in the "big guns" (other higher up salesman) just say NO there is no amount of money we are willing to pay today.

So when we were lounging by the pool an hour later we saw all the other ~~victims~~ guests touring the grounds and viewing rooms...

Favorite from the whole time was when the salesman tried to tell Josh he was going to have a nervous breakdown at some point if he doesn't make sure he is taking time to go on at least a couple vacations a year.... seriously...

My sweet family

I may look happy now but don't be deceived... I did not like sleeping in here!

Pool time

For my birthday I love getting all the free stuff around town and one of my favorites is the $30 bday certificate from Benihana . Josh and I got to go out Mon night to celebrate and it turned out to be quite the exciting dinner. So, if you haven't been before let me set the stage a little... you sit with other people around a big cooking table and the chef comes out and cooks your meal right in front of you. It's a little show and pretty entertaining. Well, after we all get our food and are about halfway done eating the young guy and his girlfriend across from us stand up freaking out about something... jumping around and whatnot. Turns out he had a cockroach crawling up his leg! So everyone at the table is freaking out, the guy catches it in a napkin and I wave the manager over. He takes the napkin and leaves to dispose of it, comes back and says "well of coarse all your meals are on us and we will bring out certificates for you as well!" So we walked away with a free dinner and $60 in gift certificates for next time! Awesome. The funniest thing was when the manager saying bye and turns to me and says happy birthday, congratulations to the other guy who was there celebrating a promotion and turns to the young guy and says "and I'm sorry".

Today I spent the day hanging around and trying to do as little as possible. Josh brought me home flowers, I got free food at all the Joe's restaurants and during nap time, instead of chores I painted my nails. All in all a great "bird"day. >little office humor if you didn't catch on<