The week itself was pretty much the usual, but the weekend was fantastic.

Saturday we went to Fresno to see Nana and Grandpa Qualls to celebrate Sebastian's 13th birthday. We thought it was going to be just another nice visit, but when we got there they had decorated their home with balloons and streamers, party hats and table displays. They really went out of their way to make it a special occasion for Sebastian and that made all of us, especially Sebastian, so happy. For his birthday Sebastian wound up with his new iPod Nano, a new set of headphones, 3 DVDs, the "Deal or No Deal" home DVD game, and lots of cash (which we have made him take a week to decide what he wants to spend it on). The Grandparents took us all to Claim Jumper for a great meal, then we had birthday cake; white cake with lemon filling and buttercream frosting from a local bakery - delicious. On top of all that they sent us home with a dozen or so Krispy Kreme donuts. Going to have to really hit the gym hard this week, I'm sure I've gained back the 6 pound I had lost.

I was super proud of Brie, amongst all the sweet treats and temptations she managed to stay within her Weight Watchers program. She has been having some medical issues as of late, but I'll let her talk about those.

This upcoming weekend Brie and I have to go out and buy a new washing machine, new lawn mower, new weed-eater, and then since we finally decided on how we want to decorate our kitchen/breakfast area, we need to go out and shop for new chairs and all the accessories we need to pull it together. We are ramping up our focus on the inside of our house because in May we are going to have our first big get together with all the families of the kids our children (ok well mainly Maddy) are friends with. We've become particularly close with two families and we have been over to both their houses on several occasions, but it was brought to our attention that in the 2 years we have known them we have never had them over to ours. We promised in May for the Keegan and Maddy's Birthday Bash we would have everyone over to our house. That gives us little less than 2 months to get all the projects we've been piling up done. Most of it revolves around actually decorating the inside of the house (new throw pillows, some new furniture pieces, filling up all the blank wall space) buying another steamcleaner to clean the carpet and finishing our big spring cleaning ( I have cleaned out 3 large trash bags full clothes for donation so far and we have three more to go in my estimate). Then of course tackling the backyard we really let it get out of control last year, we didn;t even use my brand new BBQ once last summer. We need to replant some grass in the areas the waterslide killed off, and probably power clean the cement and get rid of the sand box.

So we have lots of things to keep us busy. We've also set our sights on going on the Barenaked Ladies sponsored cruise to the Bahamas "Ships and Dips" which is sets sail from Miami in January. We figure it will be a nice early 18th Anniversary getaway for us. We saw the video podcasts of this years cruise and it just looks like too much fun to miss.