Last night, on my Birthday Eve (you know like, Christmas Eve, the night before the big day), I told Scott that in the morning, all I wanted for my birthday was to sleep in. There are only two occasions each year where I don’t feel like I need to create a long-winded excuse to sleep in, and it’s my birthday and Mother’s Day.

Now don’t get me wrong…it has nothing to do with my husband NOT wanting to let me sleep in. It’s me. Yeah, that mom-guilt that happens to boss me around. I’m such a control-freak that if I’m sleeping in and Scott gets up to tend to the boys, I’m lying in bed, intently listening for those auditory cues that my boys are getting a good, nutritious breakfast (cereal nuggets hitting bowl, not the rriiiippp of the Pop Tarts package), brush their teeth (whhhiiiiirrrrrr of the electric toothbrush for longer than 30 seconds) and wearing something appropriate for school (NOT hearing the phrase, “Daddy can I wear my Buzz Lightyear costume to school?”)

I can’t help it and I might as well just wake up because by this time, I’m working so hard, straining to hear down the hall that I’ve lost any interest in more sleep.

So this morning, Scott’s alarm went off at 7:00am, he got up immediately and walked out of the room. I could hear his heavy, half-asleep feet tumble up the stairs and then little feet jump out of bed (oh loud! did they fall? did they hurt themselves?), “flupflupflupflupflup” as they slide on their butts and back down the stairs (ouch! boys! carpet burn!)

I know they’re coming, so I pretend I’m asleep but I’m such a bad pretender! They knew I was awake, ran in, jumped on my bed and snuggled under the blankets with me. They sang Happy Birthday – one kid on each side of me – and gave me this MASSIVE card the size of a record (yeah a RECORD. remember pre- 8-track, CD and DVDs?)

And then I open it…

The card played the Star Wars theme song!

SHIT! “A long, long time ago…You were born”!?!? I’m just only again for the ninth yr in row –28 years old! That wasn’t so long ago. Really.

The boys wanted to go bowling to celebrate my birthday, and it was the best idea ever. It was our first time ever bowling with the boys. We have Wii bowling, so they were experts already. Of course, the bowling ball was bigger than them!

Andrew quickly learned that real bowling isn’t as easy as Wii bowling.

I think I heard him mutter, “awwww SHIT!” after this roll.

But Nathan learned the secret to bowling…cheering on your ball as it rolls down the lane!

Great thing about this bowling alley was that the guardrails automatically came up when it was either Andrew or Nathan’s turn. I shoulda used those damn guardrails. Because I really suck at bowling! We had a blast….little brother Nathan won the game, beating out Dad by 1 point.

Best birthday ever.

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Winner of $100 Amazon Gift Card

I put out on Twitter a call for help…asking for someone to go to Random Number Generator and have that site run a random number to get a winner for the $100 Amazon.com Gift Card that I’m giving away.

Luckily, minutes later, @Tomas_ScionLife replied with

So the winner of the $100 Amazon Gift Card is:

Susan who said,

Submitted on 2009/08/03 at 12:05pm

asian pear is the best!

Congrats Susan! My gift to you….