A Moment of Silence, please

I am having a moment of silence right now as I contemplate two near-miracles in our home, on the SAME day, no less!

1. Matthew did NOT work AT ALL... Except for Sundays, I do not know when the last day was that Matthew didn't do work-work, including any vacations we might have had. So, I want to note this here, so that I have a record that this can actually happen.

2. Matthew bought some clothes for himself by himself. This is a FIRST in his lifetime. He has always had a personal shopper--first his mom, and then me. He has NEVER gone into a store, decided he needed clothes, looked for some and actually bought them by himself. And he had FOUR kids with him. Taylor wanted to get a new tie and I suggested that he ask his father to take him. So Matthew took Michael, Taylor, Kristen and Ryan to Kohl's where they bought Taylor a tie and himself some new work clothes.

A banner day for our family!

A Birthday to Remember

Matthew is now the ripe, old age of 44 years and 6 days old. (He looks pretty good for his age, doesn't he?) His birthday was last Tuesday. I would like to say we had a rip-roaring party.....I guess we were lucky to have birthday cake together with the way the day went.

I wanted to try to make a nice dinner for his birthday. I knew that was something he would like. So I chose a new recipe, Citrus Chicken with rice, and then cake. As I was trying to decide what time I needed to get everything started to get it done on time, I realized he wasn't even going to be home to eat it before we had to go to Ryan's baseball game. He had to work late! So....we all (minus Matthew) ate the birthday citrus-chicken dinner (which didn't end up tasting very citrussy) and went to Ryan's game.

Ryan had a baseball game at 5:45 p.m. (which meant leaving the house by 4:45 p.m.). We got started on the first inning right at 5:45 p.m; however, as Chicago weather would have it, we got two batters up, and lightning strikes. The game was then put "on hold" until we had 30 minutes without any lightning. So we wait...15 minutes...more lightning....10 more minutes...more lightning and then they ended up calling the game. We got home at 7:00 p.m., no game played.

Matthew got home about 7:30 p.m.---earlier than expected, and he got to eat his re-warmed, non-citrussy Citrus Chicken, Then we had cake together.

It's probably not exactly what he imagined his 44th birthday to be like when he pondered it as a boy! ...Oh, wait, he probably never pondered it as a boy.....