Fun Weekend and My Birthday

The weekend started off right since I only had a half-day of work. For those who don't know, I work for the State of Maryland. We found out at the end of last year that all state employees would be subject to a furlough plan in 2009 so that the state could save some money. The number of furlough days was assigned based on your salary... I had to take 3 days. Now, mind you, my work is stupid and would not allow you to take whole days off. No sir, you had to take your furlough days in 4 hour increments, with 4 hours per pay period, which is every two weeks. So I took every other Friday as a half-day for 6 pay periods. This past Friday was my last furlough day. Even though I wasn't getting paid for those 4 hours off each week, I am going to miss the furlough days because 1. It's a half-day off work! and 2. I (selfishly) would go home for a few hours before picking up Peyton from daycare. Mama needs a little "me" time once in a while (that doesn't involve grocery shopping or some other errand). Haha.

So anyway, I met up with Kyle and a few of his friends from work for lunch at TGIFridays. While none of them will claim responsibility for it, the waitresses came over to sing Happy Birthday to me. I hate this more than anything! Although, I did get free ice cream out of it, and that's always good. After lunch, I headed home and played Guitar Hero for like 3 hours. Fun! Kyle picked Peyton up from daycare on his way home from work.

Saturday, the temperature was in the upper 90s. It was hot. What happened to spring? After Peyton's nap, he and I headed over to the playground. He slid down the slides about 8 times, and then declared, "Hot hot." I asked him if he wanted to go home and he said, "Yeah!" I guess the heat was bothering him, because it is very unlike him to want to leave the playground. Normally we have to drag him back home.

I knew that Kyle would watch the draft all day, so I planned on going to the Orioles game with my parents. The Orioles have a promotion that you can get one free upper reserve seat any time in the month of your birthday. Those born in January-March get a free ticket in April. So all three of us got free tickets to the game. Here is the view from our seats. Not bad at all for being free.

It was crazy packed at Camden Yards. I guess everyone wanted to go out and enjoy the weather. We waited about 20 minutes just to get our tickets, 10 minutes for some food, and 5 minutes to get on the escalator to the upper deck! Unfortunately the O's were not on their game. The pitcher gave up a lead off home run in each of the first three innings. The O's finally scored runs in the 4th and 6th innings. It drizzled a little throughout the game. It felt good though because it was still so hot, even though the sun had gone down. It was lightening too, which was pretty neat to look at. We decided to leave at the end of the 7th inning because it was 6-2 and not looking good. (The O's came back a little in the 9th, but still ended up losing 6-5.) We did enjoy ourselves though.

On Sunday, we met up with my parents and Jeremy for my annual birthday dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Peyton, for one, enjoyed the food! Before we ordered, they brought him a plate with his own bread and some banana slices. You could tell he thought he was special.

The family

Kyle and I

I ordered my usual Thai Chicken Pasta, and Jeremy copied, as always. It is so good. Peyton ate a ton, including some of my chicken, some of my mom's pasta, some of Kyle's french fries, and lots of my dad's peas. Everyone ordered cheesecake for dessert, even KYLE! Yum yum yum! Peyton enjoyed sharing with his Pop-Pop, who let him eat all of the whipped cream he wanted.

Jeremy wanted to show that he could eat a lot of whipped cream too.

As for gifts, my parents got me tickets to DC101's Chili Cook-off, which is both a cook-off and a concert. This year the bands playing are The Offspring, Third Eye Blind, Shinedown, Papa Roach, Puddle of Mudd, and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. It should be good. Jeremy works at Panera, and I just love their broccoli cheese soup, so he gave me a whole big package of it. Yum-o! Thanks guys.

Monday was my birthday. Kyle had softball, so Peyton and I went out to a very special birthday dinner at Burger King. When Kyle got home, the boys gave me my presents. Peyton handed me my card and I opened it, then he ran back to Kyle and said "More!" He did this after each gift he gave me. It was pretty cute. I'm glad that he likes to give as much as he likes to receive. Peyton helped me open my gifts, and even cleaned up the wrapping paper each time.

I got another camera!

What a big helper!

I also got a camera bag, memory card, and three shirts. Thanks Kyle and Peyton! My boys also baked me birthday brownies. Here I am blowing out my Big Bird candle (clearly left over from Peyton's birthday party, ha).

Thanks to everyone who left me birthday wishes!