The selfie stick was created for Eric's 40th!

Oops. It's pretty embarrassing that my last post was in April. We are now in June. But, it's only the second day of June. When you're living at home again and your mom's computer breaks, you just kind of have to go with the flow. (MORE ON THAT LATER! I'm working on a "Reid's...Where are they now?" post!...)

May is always like Christmas for us. It is SERIOUSLY insane. Like, I wanna drink all day errday insane. Eric kicks it off with his birthday on the 7th, Mother's Day, Maggie is the 11th, Levi is the 17th, and I am the 18th. Winner winner chicken dinner. I will go back and post about some of the NON birthday related things, but for now, let's focus on Eric. Because he is FORTY.

This was the big one! So big that we had 3 different celebrations. ;-) Well, 4 if you count his work...

The evening before his birthday, we set off to one of his favorites with our friends and old neighbors - Texas Roadhouse.

Jill was so sweet and made brownies for Eric! The waitress brought out good ol' glasses of milk and dessert was pretty perfect!

We don't get to see these guys too often now, so when we head out together, it's always a great time!

The next morning, on his actual birthday, his office staff made sure to treat him really special! 

Complete with confetti, caution tape, and a homemade carrot cake. They even gave him a kazoo which he made sure to blow in my ear each time we talked on the phone. Oy.

So thankful for the people he works with! They are really great to him. :-)

We also celebrated after church one day with our Life Connection Group from church. I didn't take any pictures (boo!) but we filled up the back room at Kansai. Love those people so much. It's great doing life with them! 

Disclaimer: The pictures ahead are completely awesome and if you try to steal them, we will bring a formal lawsuit against you.

Our last celebration was this weekend. You can't turn 40 and not get together with your old college buddies. My bestie and Paul even drove two hours so they could be here to celebrate with us! Love her! 

Not only did she drive two hours to celebrate, BUT SHE BOUGHT A SELFIE STICK FOR THE OCCASION. What?!

Oh yes.

Eric decided he wanted to eat at Brazeiro's on Fourth Street. Lemme tell you about this place: They have 16 different types of meat. Pork, lamb, bacon wrapped chicken, filet mignon...you get the picture. They bring the meat out on these swords and you just KEEP EATING IT. It is an all you can eat meat fest!

It is what we referred to as a man's paradise. 

They had an awesome salad bar and some Brazilian sides that they brought out (which were phenomenal) but you could barely see past all the meat! 

The ladies opted for the "lite" meal and just did some chicken and sides. 

Once the men all had those glazed over eyes and they looked like they had gotten their fill of protein, the waiter brought out a creme brulee for Eric's birthday! How sweet. :-) 

Then it was time. Time to start with some selfie stick action.  (Yes, I have a new camera. Yes, these are all horrible pics from my iPhone. You can't selfie stick with a Canon.)

We knew how to use it right away. 

And, we were SPOT ON with our pictures. 

Even the birthday boy didn't give us grief about taking his picture. At first.

Finally. A great group shot! Love these peeps SO MUCH!

I think we had plans to go to the movies or maybe even do a bonfire, but since it was a gorgeous evening out and the men had consumed 30 pounds of meat, we decided to hit up the Walking Bridge. More SELFIE STICK. 

How did I get so lucky to have such great friends?

We topped off the evening grabbing some dessert and I can't tell you how happy this picture makes me. It's total blackmail material.

So, we will definitely chalk this up to one of those laugh-until-your-cheeks-hurt nights. So much fun! I am the luckiest girl I know.

Happy 40th birthday, Eric. I hope you will always look back on your birthday with the greatest of memories. Meat, lots of random pictures, and Josh shouting OY when the waitress told us she was from Wisconsin. ;-)

You wish your shingles were as fun as mine

We had nice little plans today for Thunder over Louisville. Our plans were to head over to a friends house and grill out. We were renting a bouncer for the kids to play in and after dark, we were going to watch the fireworks on a projector screen outside. Sounds fun, right?! Yeah, it would have been. 

However, I will be here on the couch all day with an ice pack on muh face. ;-( 

No, Eric didn't hit me...although that would have been a fun story! Ha! Unfortunately, I have come down with Shingles. What the what?!!?

If you happen to have a weak stomach or hate to see pictures of boo boo's, this is your chance to turn away. Run. With all that is in you, LOOK AWAY SON!

With that said, my shingles haven't really been as bad as some of the pictures online. 

This was Wednesday when I first thought I was having some sort of allergic reaction or something. I was just keeping an eye on it. It started on my forehead and in my hair line, which you can barely see. 

On Thursday, it was still ever present and seemed to be growing. Ugh. I tweeted something about being SO thankful for makeup when you have a weird rash on your face. Oh, and something else about being thankful I'm not Amish. You know, because makeup. ;-) Anyways, the spots were there, but very easily hidden with a couple coats of concealer and foundation.  

Then came Friday. It started covering my eye brow and MY EYE LID. This was a shot in the morning.

And, finally, Friday afternoon. SORRY for the hideous mug shots!!

It was hard to keep my eye open. I headed to urgent care. I had sunglasses on and I wish I had been videoing the receptionist when she asked "what are we seeing you for today?" I removed my sunglasses and said, "I think something is wrong with my face." Priceless!

They took me straight back and had me fill out paperwork in the back. That should have been clue #1. The nurse asked me a bunch of questions and the doctor came in almost immediately. She looked at me and less than a minute later, she declared I had shingles. She told me they were making an appointment for me immediately with an eye doctor. Fast forward about three minutes and they had me walking out the door to go see the eye doctor. The whole urgent care visit was less than 10 minutes.

While waiting on the eye doctor, I received this from my brother. Typical.

The eye doc was super nice. But, I don't remember a lot of what he said after, "need to make sure it hasn't gone onto your eye..." He was explaining to me what would happen if it had gone further than the eye lid. I think I must have looked panicked or gone white because he quietly asked the nurse to go get a Coke. They poured some in a cup and politely asked me to drink it.

He did his exam and praise the Lord, only my eye lid was infected. Happy dance!

Again, my brother:

He couldn't just normally say, "we are on our way to bring Levi to you". Oy.

This has been painful and irritating. I'm not gonna lie. But, I am PRAYING I have seen the worst of it and it will not continue to become more painful. All I can do is wait. :-)

And, because you can NEVER GET ENOUGH, one more message from this morning:

My brother brought me eye drops.

And a patch.

Preschool bingo is where it's at

If you've never played Bingo with a room full of 4 year-olds, well, you need to. It's quite adorable. 

I went to play Bingo for Books with Maggie's classroom and let me tell you...they take their Bingo games very seriously. 

I'm pretty sad to see Maggie's preschool year coming to an end. We ADORE her preschool teacher and are just thrilled with the wealth of information Maggie has learned this year.

Each school day, every student has an "assignment". Letter person, light person, line leader, caboose (Maggie hates being the caboose...she would much rather lead! Ha!), and so on. On the day that I was there, she was the door holder. She explained to me that each person has to say, "thank you, Maggie" as they pass through the door.

If they don't say "thank you, Maggie", she tells the teacher. Oy. We are still working on the tattling skills. She's a cute little door holder, if I do say so myself!

Along with Bingo, they did an Easter Egg hunt. It was all the rage! Each student got to find as many eggs as would fit inside their egg crate. 

I tell you what...in all the hustle and bustle, it's moments like these that remind me to slow down and take it all in. I forget that I need to just enjoy them while they're little.

Because there's not much better in life than enjoying a little one on one time playing Bingo and eating popsicles with your favorite 4 year old girl.

I broke out my new camera for Easter!

For the last couple of years, I've been really wanting a new camera. I've been saving my pennies and finally decided this was the time. After doing lots of research and talking to a few people, I am happy happy to report that I'm a proud new Canon owner! And what better time to try it out than when we are looking and acting our best...Easter?! 

I'm going to go ahead and make the disclaimer that I have NO idea what I'm doing. At all. A few people have shown me some specifics, but right now, I'm just clicking away in Automatic mode and letting the camera do the work. That may never change. 

Of course, after church and the annual DO NOT CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES YET lovely family picture:

Love my babies. At least I got a smile before Levi changed into his ever-loving basketball shorts with a shirt that doesn't match and Maggie spilled mac n cheese all over the front of her. Good times.

And, of course, it wouldn't be a great holiday without your brother stealing your camera to take horrid closeup shots for you. (I will choose not to tell you which foundation is majorly failing me in this picture...)

He's really great at capturing the grumpy cat, double chin photos, too.

On to better things. Like sunflower peep cakes! Good job, Jenny!

And my Easter cookies...

...that I bought. ;-)

It was gorgeous outside, so we were thrilled that the kids could do their egg hunt outdoors. 

Each year, I tell myself to remember to pick up cute baskets for the kids do use for their hunt. And each year they end up using a Target bag. ;-) Details.

I hid Maggie's eggs, so they were very easy to find. Eric hid Levi's. Poor Levi.

Even better than finding all the eggs is the anticipation of what's inside.

Maggie announced that she'd gotten fifty thousand dollars from her eggs. She was just slightly off. 

It was so beautiful outside that we did what every other normal family does on Easter Sunday: we loaded up and went to the gun range.

Jenny got some practice in with her cute little pink take-your-eye-out gun. I shot a round through it and screamed when a shell casing came back and hit me in my sunglasses. TWICE. ;-)

Presh. Boys and their guns.

The kids waited patiently until it was their turn to shoot their guns. They got Drill Sergeant Travis asking them the three important rules of gun safety...

Aaaand, go! 

Even Mags got in on the action! This was her first time shooting. To answer your question, YES, you can shoot a gun with a big ol' bow on your head! :-)

Had such a great day with my family!