Weekend

 Friday was another great day spent at the literacy conference.  I loved it.  The only thing marring my joy was that something is blooming or pollinating that is making my eyes itchy and watery.  A lot.  I pretty much wept through the day which must look weird when you're sitting in a class about teaching writing.

I came home exhausted.  However sitting still all day is more tiring than teaching, I'll never know, but it is.  Hats off to people with office jobs.  I am way too fidgety to like to sit all day.

Adam and I usually go to dinner on Friday night, but I was too tired.  Instead, I made an oven pancake.  I am not sure how that was less tiring than having food served to me, but it was.  Maybe because I didn't have to decide where to go and what to order.

Oven pancake for dinner.

Being empty nesters is nice.

Saturday was the big 5-1.  We both slept in a bit and although we meant to go to breakfast, it was more lunchtime.  We enjoyed our breakfast food for lunch and then went to IKEA.  We bought a few things and looked at more and pointed to things we liked and things we didn't and I always just enjoy walking around holding Adam's hand. 

We went home and did a tiny bit of work and then met Olivia and Edgar and Liliana for dinner although it was late afternoon.  Olivia insisted on buying us tacos and we enjoyed visiting with them.  Because we have to have groceries, even though it was our birthday, we hit Winco on the way home.  Then Adam did some church stuff and I folded laundry.  

We had a late dinner of pumpkin pie.  They had this big display of pumpkin pies at Winco and we decided it was a good birthday cake.  

Since our birthday is the same day and we no longer live by Janet, we never really have birthday cake.  It doesn't really occur to us, so the pumpkin pie was a nice surprise (especially pumpkin pie in March--novelty!)

I felt loved by many who called and texted throughout the day.  Adam's cousin Pam texted us happy birthday greetings and then I felt like a HORRIBLE PERSON because her birthday had been the day before and I'd missed it, her first birthday without her husband, who passed away.

I texted back how sorry I was and then come to find out her birthday was actually the 24th anyway.  I knew it was around our birthday, but I was going in the wrong direction.

Sunday I texted her Happy Birthday, for real this time.  Hopefully she knows that despite my follies, I really love her.

Saturday night we had a terrific lightning and thundering and hail and rain and snow storm.  When the wind and rain blow just right, we get a leaky window.  Luckily it has only happened a handful of times in the nearly decade we've lived here.  Desert living for the win.

Sunday morning we woke up to snow and when I was backing out of the driveway on the way to church, I saw the daffodils with their heads bowed under the new snow.  Poor daffodils!  Then I realized this happens almost every spring and the daffodils bloom anyway.

My new goal is to be like the daffodils.  Bloom anyway.

I was leaving church with a lady in our ward who is older than me and always a little cantankerous and intimidating.  She openly rolls her eyes in Relief Society if she observes nonsense.  As we walked down the steps and the snow was still falling, she said something about not being happy about the snow.  I said, "I have had lots of itchy and watery eyes from allergies so at least the snow will help that."

She said, "I'd rather you had allergies."

Somehow it made me happy.  I felt like she liked me well enough to say a sassy comment like that.  I felt like I'd arrived in some way.

Also Sunday we had a bunch of youth and their leaders for a meeting at our house.  Adam led some training and I stayed upstairs which suited me just fine.  Mark came partway through the meeting and he joined me upstairs in my office.

He brought me a bag of peanut m and ms and said, "Happy Birthday!"

It's impossible not to be happy with peanut m and ms.  (But I said, "Does this mean you won't build those drawers for me?"  Because that was what I requested for my birthday.  He said he would still build them plus he got a haircut.  Happiness all around.)