Ben has a Birthday Party and the Blog Gets a New Look

Sunday night we had one of a seemingly endless succession of Ben's birthday parties. This one was for all the folks in Luke's family, and we had it at his parents' house. I am so glad they were willing to take care of the hosting responsibilities, because the thought of having all those people crammed into my tiny house was almost enough to make me take a long walk off a short cliff.

It turned out to be a really mild day, so we were able to spill out onto the deck, site of the "Kiddie 500". At that point I was very glad that we never considered having a clown or anything, because I don't think any hired entertainment would be nearly as fun as racing in circles and competing to see who could claim the most spectator toes.

After dinner we opened presents. It was the usual mind-numbing chaos, and we got the usual motorized stuff...which my kids can never get enough of, so that's fine.

After presents we did cake--or cupcakes in this case. I hate store-bought birthday cake, and this is the one instance where I can flat-out refuse to have it. At least until next year, when I'm sure Ben will insist on some nasty sugar-laden confection decorated with tacky designs on top. BLECH! Yep, I was definitely going to squeeze in one more year of yellow cake with fudge frosting. Ben is completely mystified by the whole candle thing. He has got the present thing down pat, and he knows all about the cake, but put the candles in front of him and he just stares. We try and coax a breath out of him for about 30 seconds, then I get tired of the charade and blow it out myself. Let's eat already! I'm sure Ben is thinking the same thing.

There's no relevance to this picture except that no one ever takes a picture of me and my boys...so here you go.

Well, this month has kind of been my blog's birthday as well, so in honor of the occasion, I decided yesterday that it was high time for a makeover. Enough with the teeny-bopper colors I've had for two years now! Out with the old, in with the new! So after a looooooong search on Pyzam, I finally settled on this sleek brown and blue template and set to work making changes. I am really happy with the finished result, except that I was totally bummed when I opened it at work today using Internet Explorer and saw that it looked completely different than it does using Mozilla Firefox, my browser of choice. I couldn't see the pretty brown stripe down the side, and the words in my header were all messed up. Upon further investigation, I realized that Jennifer's blog also looked weird in IE (it had a blue background instead of the polka-dots) and that Katie's looked a lot better than it does on my home computer...leading me to believe that Jennifer uses Firefox and Katie uses IE. So you know what I say to all this? BOO! Boo to the fact that we don't all see the same thing, and double-boo to the fact that people looking at my blog on IE think that I don't care that my header looks messed up. Which I do. I care a lot! In fact, I am very OCD about stuff like that, but if I'm going to make it look good, it's going to look good on my browser for crying out loud!!! Once more, with feeling: BOOOOOO!

On to happier topics, I also added some junk in the sidebar--which is very fun for my narcissistic self--but I'm also hoping it will help me update the blog more often. I'll have to log on to change my widgets...after all, I don't want anyone thinking it takes me two weeks to read a book. Except in this case it might, because that book is a snooze and I have no desire to pick it up. Anyway, hope you enjoy all the stuff about me on the right.

So, we'll have one more b-day party for Ben at Gigi's house this week, and of course it'll also be Thanksgiving, so I'll catch you all on the flip side. Hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving! If you're looking for a little entertainment, you can alway try deep-frying your turkey--more often than not it results in a big old grease fire, and then a hot firefighter will have to come and take care of business. It's just a thought.