Productive Birthday!

We started celebrating yesterday with a lovely drive in a nearby park and then over an hour driving to go to the restaurant where I wanted to eat! (with a stop at the Apple stores first for the benefit of "iKelvin," the family's "Apple fanatic" ;-)

The poor boys were falling asleep over the food at the end, but we had lots of fun. We arrived back home at 1:20 am and then spent some time laying down on a blanket in our deck and looking at the beautiful starry sky!

I was awakened by my three boys singing happy birthday & bearing gifts! K bought me a cute & colorful t-shirt and a gorgeous green bamboo salad bowl (similar to this one). K had to work, but he did it from home while the boys were supposed to clean their room and help me get the house ready for friends who were coming later (they mostly listened to music on their ipads/ipods -- one of their latest pastimes).

I took advantage of the hot day to do two smallish loads of laundry (the boys' bedsheets & tons of swimwear) which dried up very quickly and which I brought inside from line drying just before this really windy thunderstorm started with lots of rain! Oh, and before that I also dragged the boys to the recycling center with me where we recycled tons of cardboard plus our usual plastic, metal & glass. It was super hot, but with their help we did it quickly.

We then drove to town where we spent an hour at our local "paint your own" clay place. I'll show you what my rectangular plate & the boys' "tea kettle" tea bag holder pieces look like later (we painted them with the rainbow colors!). After buying some fruit (for a "rainbow" platter!) we came back home where we started cooking (and reheating some of the pasta we had brought from last night's restaurant trip).

Our friends came and we had a good time with yummy foods and fun games. Photos forthcoming!

It was a great day made even happier by the countless Happy Birthday wishes I received via facebook -- the joys of having a Sunday birthday when everyone is online and on fb! ;-)