November 4-10 2018

The big event of the week is that we celebrated Emmie’s 9th birthday! It was her golden birthday this year.  She turned 9 on the 9th.  She woke up extra early that day.  Which was a bummer for Ainsley and Owen who got up extra early to decorate for her.  So they made her wait upstairs until they were done.  She patiently waited for them to be done.  And even though the surprise was spoiled I think she loved it just the same.  Her day went about as usual until after school.  It wasn’t her year for a friend party but we let her have Elsie over to spend the evening with the family.  Her primary teacher brought her a cupcake, which was super sweet.  Then she played with Owen and Ains and Elsie until dinner.  For dinner she chose fettuccine Alfredo.  This girl loves her carbs.  Originally she wanted fettuccini Alfredo and rice (her second favorite food) but that sounded gross…so I made her narrow it down.

After dinner she opened her gifts.  She got “Who Was” books from Elsie.  Which she loves.  A Chewbacca stuffed animal John bought from the Disney store when he was in Florida.  A special backpack for soccer that will hold her ball. A pillow…”like Owens”. A watch from Owen (which turned out to be her favorite). A wallet from Ainsley. And boring clothes.

After dinner we headed to Emmie’s beloved POJO’s.  My kids love POJO’s.  It’s a super old and pretty run down arcade type place with old bumper cars and a carousel.  It was the coolest place in the 90’s.  We love it because the games are all only 1-2 tokens, there are always coupons for free bumper car rides, and you always win tons of tickets.  (Unlike the more modern counterparts where all the games are a dollar or more and you never win many tickets.). Elsie got over 500 and Emmie had over 700 tickets by the end of the night.  And with only $10 in tokens!  POJO’s is truly a ghetto hidden gem.

While we were at POJO’s I was so impressed with Emmie.  She is growing up to be an amazing person.  She is so kind and giving.  She knew she had more tickets than Elsie so she kept giving Elsie some of hers.  While they were playing air hockey a little boy made it so that the puck went into Elsie’s goal.  So when Elsie made her next shot Emmie just let it in the goal. “To make it fair.”  These girls are so kind and funny and silly (and crude some times…thank you older brothers). I’m just thrilled with the kind of person Emmie is growing up to be.

After we were done gaming and tickets were cashed in for prizes, we came home to Oreo ice cream cake.  A little bit of playing and then off to bed.  I think she had a good day.

The week before Emmie’s birthday was crazy.  It was super busy to begin with because I needed to get everything organized for my family and primary before I left them for a week for Mexico.  That added to a week already full with work and kids schedules and meetings etc was making me stressed.  But then, to make matters worse, on Tuesday night our dishwasher broke. We were hoping it would be something we could fix.  But after John and I worked on it for over an hour we determined that the problem was serious and that our dishwasher was done.  It was old when we bought our house and it gave us a good 5+ years…but it had unfortunately done it’s last load of dishes.  Replacing a dishwasher would have been simple enough. But all of our appliances are old and we had decided previously that when one broke we were going to replace them all and get an upgraded set.  So the second half of my week was spent doing the daily dishes by hand.  (How did women do anything but dishes before dishwashers?!  My appreciation for modern conveniences has skyrocketed.) and shopping for all new appliances.  This is no small feat for a worrier/over analyzer like myself.  Thursday night was my lowest point when John and I went to Home Depot with appliances chosen and ready to place my order….we left the store 45 minutes later having not ordered anything and questioning my very existence.  I hate salesman! And Home Depot salesman don’t even get commission!  (Supposedly.) I also realized I forgot about an auxiliary meeting I had that night and so I had to walk into that over 30 minutes late.  It was slightly awkward. But I’ll recover.  Long story short, after several days of reading about appliance reviews and features we have appliances on their way.  Even though the salesman thinks my choices are old fashioned and not up to date.  Lame.  Sadly they won’t be here for a week.  So John and the kids are stuck with no dishwasher all week while I’m in Mexico relaxing.  I feel terrible! And they have to inspect and install them without me!  The control freak, anal, and detailed person inside me is going crazy.  It will take all the strength I can muster to hand this task over to John to handle without me.  He’s the relaxed non particular party in our marriage.  While I’m grateful he’s this way most of the time, I’m going to be pressuring him to be a little more like me during delivery and installation.

And with that….my bags are mostly packed and I’m off to Mexico on Monday! Yay!