Birthday Weekend

My birthday weekend wasn't really shaping up to be quite what I had hoped, mostly because we couldn't do much with how Carter was feeling.  I was sad about it because I hate seeing him uncomfortable and unhappy, and I miss being able to do fun things with him.  There was an added insult to injury all weekend, viewing my Facebook memories which were full of Disney, Cedar Point, and the Jersey Shore, plus a post about our Legoland trip last year.  I was so lucky to have those experiences all those years in a row, but this weekend felt like a bit of a letdown in comparison.  The fun is nice, but I think being on vacation for your birthday as a mom feels easier, too, because it takes some of the typical mom labor off the table.  When we're traveling, I don't have to feel compelled to clean, I don't have to cook meals, and I can escape from the endless to-do lists at home.  But being at home this time around, it felt necessary to do a lot of the household labor because a) it was a weekend when I normally play catch-up on all of that stuff; b) if I don't do it I'm just going to have things piling up; and c) people need to eat.  I guess my compromise was eating out pretty much every dinner so I didn't have to cook.

I ended up taking Friday off, just to give myself an extra long weekend.  Jacob had a dermatologist appointment and a session with his trainer in the morning anyway, and Craig and I had a date night planned, so it just made sense.  I spent a chunk of the day running Jacob around and running errands while he was with his trainer.  I made a stop at Aldi to pick up a few things, and much to my surprise, I found something I had been looking for:

They had these snuggly stuffed animals a few weeks ago, and Carter was obsessed with the hippo.  I liked the capybara, but I held off on buying them because we obviously don't need more stuffed animals.  But then I thought the capybara might be a good sort of body pillow for me in bed.  I just got a new cervical pillow because my neck felt all messed up and I could never get comfortable, and when I sleep on my side, it's helpful to have something to lean against.  Well, once I decided that would be a cute, useful buy for just $10, I couldn't find the capybara anywhere.  The hippo kept popping up, and I knew Carter really wanted it.  But as he got sicker over the past few weeks I felt like he needed a pick-me-up.  One day he needed to get blood work done and Aldi was across the parking lot so I offered to go check.  Sadly, they didn't have a hippo.  But a couple days later I went to a different one--one that I knew had a couple earlier in the week.  When I didn't see any where I thought I would, I remembered that there had been a random one stuffed in a spot near the end of an aisle, all by itself.  Sure enough, wasn't that hippo still sitting there!  I snatched him up so fast, and he was even on clearance!  It absolutely made Carter's day.  They've been nearly inseparable since, and the hippo is cute "belly buddies" with the Figment we got at Disney because they both lay the same way.  Well, back to my capybara...I had lost hope for my own until I went to the Aldi near Jacob's trainer, and imagine my surprise when I saw a large, brown fluffy butt among the Squishmallow display!  I snatched him up so fast, too, and named him as my birthday gift to myself!  I mean, how cute is that face?  Even the male cashier remarked about the cuteness!  He's been such a cozy support and has made me so happy!

As I mentioned, we had a date night Friday night.  Craig had the chance to get tickets to a concert at CMAC in Canandaigua through work, and we looked through the options to pick which one.  One of the shows was the band Heart, and as an 80s girl at heart, that definitely seemed like a fun one.  Well, the day finally arrived.  We had never been there before, so we weren't entirely sure what to expect.  We had lawn seats but also had access to an area with its own bar, chairs, and bathrooms.  We had to set the boys up with dinner before we left, and then made the hour drive to Canandaigua.  We got through the security line, found food inside, and then went to pick a spot.  We sat in the Corona Cabana area for a bit before settling down a little ways down on the lawn.  Of course it happened to be one of the coldest days of summer for an outdoor show.  The high maybe made it into the mid-60s, but it was going to cool down a lot.  I had a hoodie and a coat, and I was glad that coat had gloves!  I also brought two blankets.  The early evening was nice, though.

You could see Canandaigua Lake in the distance--if you zoom in you might be able to see the sun reflecting off the water.

Doesn't happen often that we're alone!

Once we settled into our spot to wait for the show to start, the sunset put on a little show of its own!

The first act was Todd Rundgren.  He's most famous for the "Bang on the Drum All Day" song of arena rock fame, but he did have a couple yacht rock-type hits from the 70s that I recognized when I looked him up.  As the show started, we sat there waiting for any of the three...and waited...and waited.  He sang a ton of songs for an opening act, and I finally got impatient and looked up the set list on the internet.  He wasn't going to sing "Bang on the Drum" at all, which had to disappoint people, but he did do the last two near the end.  He certainly didn't sound as good as he used to, but those were cool to hear.  Here's one of them:

The sky continued to do lovely things while we waited through his set.

It was a pretty chilly evening by this point, and into the low 50s by the time we left, but we managed.  Thank goodness for the blankets and my gloves, but definitely not what I expected for August!  

The Heart portion of the show ended up having a few more songs I didn't know than maybe I'd hoped, but the ones I did know were pretty awesome to hear live.  Ann Wilson still sounds pretty incredible, and Nancy runs and jumps while strumming her guitar like a woman half her age.  I realized as I sat there that all three main performers of the night were around our parents' ages--Todd Rundgren was about the same as Craig's dad, Ann was around my mom's age, and Nancy was around Craig's mom's age.  I can't really fathom any of them doing a high-energy show like that, so it was pretty impressive to be highly entertained by a trio of septuagenarians!

"These Dreams" strikes me as such a classic 80s ballad.

"Alone" has been one of my favorite songs of theirs for a while--possibly since I saw Carrie Underwood absolutely nail it on American Idol back in the day.  This version was a bit more low-key than the original, but it's still a favorite.  It's actually the one song of theirs I have on my phone already, although I'll probably download a couple more after this.

Before the last song, we packed up and headed down toward the exit.  We figured we'd get a couple minutes where we could see better, and then try to beat the traffic since we had an hour drive home and it was already around 11pm.  It was fun to get a better view when they sang "Barracuda", and you can see just how high energy Nancy was!

It was a really fun night out with Craig, especially since we still don't do that enough.  It was a very late night for us, though.  And likely as a result, I didn't feel that great on Saturday.  I only had one drink at the concert, so it wasn't that.  I didn't sleep well because I forgot to take my medicine, though in retrospect, when I realized that at 2:30am, I probably should have just taken it anyway and slept in.  But I didn't sleep soundly after that and was awake early--probably because Carter had a rough bathroom trip early.  I laid in bed too long after that and stayed sort of tired and groggy most of the day.  I finally perked up a bit later in the day after some caffeine, and I started working on some of the house cleanup since we were planning on having both sets of parents over on Sunday.  But then Craig's parents couldn't make it that day, so we postponed to Monday--and thank goodness because I had a lot to do and little energy to do it.  I took Jacob to get some chicken he'd been asking for for dinner, and got an amazing chicken finger garbage plate myself.  Craig had Chipotle and Carter got some wings from Salvatore's.  Being dairy-free and managing nausea has been challenging when it comes to eating out, but he's finding options.

My actual birthday on Sunday was...not spectacular.  Carter didn't feel good enough to go to church, so just Jacob and I went.  When I got home I had so many tasks awaiting me--vacuuming, bathroom cleaning, kitchen cleaning, picking up the rest of the piles of accumulated stuff and papers, etc.  Plus the kids are both struggling with what to eat right now--Carter because of his UC (and maybe some mental stuff with the nausea), and Jacob because he's sort of bored with everything or having aversions to things he eats too much.  As a result, I spent quite a while trying to figure out how to get Carter fed (putting off my own lunch because I didn't want his to get pushed off further while I ate).  I ultimately spent most of the afternoon taking care of everyone else, plus grocery shopping.  And, of course, anything little I tried to do for myself (Aldi shopping for a glass pumpkin and my free birthday Taco Bell Freeze) ended up not working out right.  I was a bit discouraged by that point because I just sort of wanted a day where I didn't have to plan and figure everything out for everyone else, and there ended up being a lot of that.  And then I couldn't even figure out what I wanted to eat for my own dinner.  Jacob got Craig to take him back for more chicken from the same place as the previous night, and Craig got that too (and loved it).  Carter figured out a Taco Bell order that worked for him (and I was finally able to get my Freeze), and I ended up with Chinese food, which I love but almost never get.  That part of the night worked out better than expected, so that helped end the day on a better note.  I also decided on a whim at one point to clear out all of the Hot Wheels stuff from the toy corner.  I had realized not long ago that it was taking up a ton of space and not getting used, so I moved all of that down to the crawl space (two bins and a garbage bag), and sent a couple other things to the freebie pile.  It did help the mess quite a bit, so that was nice.  That part of the room is bugging me a lot less now!  

We did have a little bit of an additional challenge in that Jacob got a new desk and wanted to revamp his whole room, which he wanted to get started that night.  A couple weeks ago we moved out our old armchair that he insisted on keeping six years ago, and that sort of jump-started him wanting to get rid of a bunch of stuff.  He was also feeling like his allergies were getting bad, and no wonder since he never cleans it and it's too cluttered and messy for me to even attempt it.  It's been a process to sort through things, vacuum all the accumulated dust, and move all the furniture around.  We got a little hung up since his preferred arrangement didn't quite work out (badly placed vent, directly under the window), and I ran out of time and energy to put the desk together.  We sort of left his room in disarray at that point to "test out" having his bed in the middle of the room in a different spot.  I finally got back to it on Tuesday night at his request (and of course, Carter had a long round of nausea at the same time so I was on the phone with him in the basement for a while).  I got the desk together and shifted around the rest of the furniture.  But he may be having second thoughts now that everything is in place, so we'll just call it a work in progress.

Monday morning involved a lot of work before everyone arrived around noon.  Oh, and I invited Lori, Kevin, and Honey the dog last minute on Sunday, too.  I tried to do a good but low-maintenance meal--pulled pork, our family-favorite broccoli-rice casserole, salt potatoes (easy in the Instant Pot), and watermelon.  My mom brought a salad and Lori brought cole slaw.  I got the pork started first thing in the morning, then finally got going on cake.  I meant to do it the night before but ran out of time, so I had catching up to do in the morning.  I decided to do something a bit more fun and whip out the giant cupcake mold from Carter's first birthday.  Since we were also going to belatedly celebrate Jacob's birthday and Craig's dad's upcoming birthday, I asked Jacob for input and he didn't have much.  So I figured I'd just do something generic but a little more fun than a round cake.  Of course, when Jacob saw it in pieces that morning, he was like, "That's it?"  So, I ended up making cupcakes too, since I'd bought the second box of mix just in case.  But I kept everything really simple aside from making a chocolate shell bottom (it's a bit more "finished" than cake alone).  This is how the big one turned out:

It's far from perfect, especially since the shell cracked a bit as it sat out, but it does look like a giant cupcake and I thought it was cute.  And it was much easier than messing around with piping things on.  If I had more frosting I might have done a more fun top, but this worked.  I decided that rather than try to have three people blowing out candles on the big cake, we could do one candle each in a cupcake and do it all together.

It was fun to share that moment with two other people!

It really ended up being a nice afternoon with family.  I loved getting to see Honey (who may be coming to stay with us for a few days soon!), and catching up with family is always nice.  Lori brought me some flowers (blue vase in the back) and the boys got me the front flowers.  All so bright and cheery!

But my best gift was from my parents.  It's not too often that I get a physical birthday present, so when they said they had one for me I was intrigued.  And when my dad took credit for it, even more so, because he's never been the gift guy.  Apparently it was supposed to be a Christmas gift, but my mom feared my dad would never keep it a secret for that long!  While they were on their European river cruise, apparently a glass artist came on board to do some demonstrations and sell his pieces.  While they could have gotten me a nice but less expensive glass bird, my dad decided they should splurge and get me this:

It's so beautiful!  It's hard in the video to see how three-dimensional the inside is, but it's so cool.  It's probably one of the coolest, most perfect-for-me gifts I have ever received, and instantly became one of my most prized possessions--not just because it's cool, but because of the thoughtfulness behind it.  

It wasn't exactly ideal to have the busiest day of our weekend be the day before going back to work, but it was worth it.  But Tuesday wasn't easy, even though I was working from home that day.  And the rest of the week never really let up.  I'll post more on that soon...