4th of july weekend

4th of July...for us, it was a fabulous 4-day weekend. Can't beat that! A lot of stuff can be jammed into 4 days, so here's a rundown...

FRIDAY
The termite guy came in the morning and fixed our little problem. Leaving us with another problem:



A wall that looks like this. So, that's the next home improvement project...removing the wallpaper from the walls, adding texture, and painting...

Later that evening, Chris flew on the Company jet to the Texas Rangers game with some guys from his department. A good night out with the boys...meanwhile, back at the house, Aspen left with her mom to spend the month of July with her...and I headed to Olive Garden with my friend Marie to celebrate her birthday. We spent most of the evening chatting and laughing there, and didn't get home until 11:00...

SATURDAY
First off, I worked up the budget for July, and then Chris and I went over it to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Will be a tight month, since we've got two birthdays (Chris and Aspen) and the unexpected termite expense. Then I spent a few hours shopping for Chris' upcoming birthday. Found everything I wanted. Strange thing happened while I was shopping...I was just walking along and a vein in my finger popped! It hurted like hell, and was sticking up out of my finger...and then it started to feel a little better, and the blood began to spread through my finger. It looked awful. I've never had anything like that happen to me. Later that evening, Chris and I went to dinner at El Chico and enjoyed our time together. I also began working on the scrapbook pages I'm doing for hire, and so far, so good...

SUNDAY
I spent most of this day cleaning house while Chris worked outside trimming trees, etc. Included in my chores for the day was a bath for Ocho...his second one. This one went a lot better than the first, though he still shivered for about 30 minutes afterwards...and now he smells so good!



Doesn't he look miserable? :) Chris and I had a quick dinner at Subway and then took care of the grocery shopping together. And then I worked some more on scrapbooking...

MONDAY
Chris' 32nd birthday! I got up and made some blueberry muffins for him (his request) before we headed to take care of a little car maintenance...Chris got his oil changed and I badly needed new brakes...which also led to a new rotor, as my brakes were so bad. So we went over the budgeted amount on this of course! Making it an even tighter month for us...but we got it taken care of. Then we went home for muffins and presents...



Here's Chris' 32nd birthday "portrait"...I always like to get one of him on his actual birthday every year...



A cool shirt...he may actually wear this one!



A book about Lance Armstrong...Chris isn't a reader of novels, but he will occasionally read a book like this...

And, of course, there were other gifts...

Mimi, Chris, and I had a nice dinner for his birthday at Red Lobster...and then headed home for some cheesecake...on the way home, we spotted this:



TUESDAY
Got in a little extra sleep today...put Ocho back in his cage after feeding him, and he let us sleep until 10:00! A definite treat for sure. We're cooking out some yummy food and having a lazy day. May try to watch a few fireworks from our backyard. Trying to enjoy our day, even with the knowledge that our air conditioner has frozen up on us TWICE this weekend and we'll need to call someone about it tomorrow...I tell you, we can't seem to get ahead at all, with all of this stuff going wrong. It's impossible. It's depressing. It's typical, for us, it seems...