Birthday

This year I turned 31. I guess that's not a super exciting year because my birthday was pretty low-key. It was on a Sunday which meant that we were home all day watching General Conference. I love general conference (sometimes I don't love that I have to share my birthday with it...haha, too many good things) I did love that i got to spend the whole day with my family no one had to go off to work or school or meetings. It was just us all day, together. Those days are rare and it was a treat that it happened to be on my birthday.  We started the day with a cream of wheat and strawberry breakfast. then enjoyed some cuddly time watching conference from our couch.I'm pretty sure we ended up cleaning in between the conference sessions and then I spent some time working on my old cow carpet with Charlie during the last session of conferrence. (My mom gave me a kit to make a cow carpet when I was a teenager...I still haven't finished it but I'm getting close. Charlie asks to help finish it every conference-time.) Sorry I don't have photos of the cow carpet..

Anyway, after the final session of conference we cleaned up a bit again and then headed to our secret garden. It was on my birthday 4 years earlier that we discovered this garden so we thought it would be fun to go again on my birthday and try to find some glimpses of fall. And to take photos of course. And get some fresh air and time to run around. So, that's what we did. And we enjoyed the crisp weather and the few fall colors we saw.

  

 

 

Running through the maze...

And trying to get a family picture next to the one tree that had fall colors.

And they were being charming for a bit!

Charlie loves to be the one to make you smile for a picture...He is a great little assistant. While Max was taking the pictures Charlie was there next to him pulling out all the stops to get Miles and me to smile.

And we did find some more fall leaves to play with...and it was a blast.

My goofy boy that loves to be a clown (More like his daddy each day)

Some final races before we needed to head back to our car...

And a couple more family photo attempts before getting in the car.

After getting back we made a quick bean dip dinner that turned into my birthday cake. 

Post dinner, I opted out of a real cake and we made and decorated chocolate covered strawberries.

Such a delicious treat and a fun activity. I don't think we'll be going pro with our decorating skills anytime soon though.


We got the boys in bed nice and late and I worked on some photos while Max cleaned up the kitchen.

A couple days later we were able to enjoy an out-of-the house date with just the two of us, filling up on crab and shrimp.  Perfect if you ask me!

And those were some birthday celebrations. Also, the day after my birthday, I got news that I had been awarded a scholarship for a photography class that I had been looking into for awhile. I'll probably have more on that later but the class has been amazing and I only have 2 weeks left. It was an awesome birthday surprise!