McDaniel Musings: May 2013

It has been about a month since I last posted, and there has been so much going on! I swear life gets busier and busier every single day. I don't know how I ever got anything done when I was working outside of home!

Anyway, back to busy life. Since I last posted, Matt had his 30th birthday, we celebrated Mother's Day, my Dad's birthday, my mother-in-law's birthday, went to 2 concerts, Audrey's preschool graduation - did I miss anything? I apologize if I did!

For Matt's birthday we just had some family over to have pizza and birthday cake. There was so much going on we never really got to go out to dinner or anything. Several months back when I heard The Piano Guys were coming to Boise, I just knew Matt would love to go to that concert, so I immediately bought tickets on a presale, so I was finished with Matt's birthday shopping in February! It was really hard to keep it a secret until his birthday on April 24th. He also got tickets to the Pentatonix concert from his family, so we had two concerts to attend with a couple weeks of each other. That's super exciting because I'm pretty sure I haven't been to a real concert in YEARS! Pentatonix was a couple of weeks ago, and The Piano Guys was just this past Tuesday, and they were both equally wonderful and fun!

I was so excited about Mother's Day this year. I really don't know why - I guess just because I have dreamed all my life about being a mom, so it's exciting to me to have a day to celebrate it. The day started with Matt and the kids making a pancake breakfast for us before church. It was delicious! Before we left, the kids gave me my Mother's Day present, which was box of metal roses to hang on my wall. Audrey had been very clear with her dad that she wanted to get me "something to hang on the wall" for Mother's Day, and it was perfect! She picked them out all by herself!

Church was also wonderful. The kids all got up and sang a couple of songs for the mothers of the ward, and afterwards we got little baggies of chocolates which I promptly had to hide from my kids and then eat in private, because they had each picked out which one was "theirs" as soon as they saw it. I felt kinda bad for eating my three pieces of chocolate in hiding, but hey! A mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do, and it was MY CHOCOLATE! :)

The week before my Dad's birthday, I was walking through Costco perusing their book section (which is my favorite part of Costco) and I saw this book called "Country Wisdom's Everything You Need To Know To Live Off The Land". I thought, "wow! This is perfect!" I was originally just going to send a card, but I couldn't pass up that book - it's just so him! I didn't want to buy it at Costco and then ship it, so I took a picture of it, and as soon as I got home I looked it up on amazon.com (my favorite online shopping venue) and lo and behold they had it, and it was cheaper than Costco even, plus free shipping! I ordered it and off it went on it's way to Texas, and he loved it like I hoped he would. Happy Birthday Dad!

When asked what my mother-in-law wanted to do for her birthday, she requested an empanada party, so Matt happily obliged. It's been a couple of years since we made empanadas, so we were excited to make them again! They are a lot of work, I'll tell you, but soooo worth it in the end. Matt spent most of the day Saturday making the chimichurri sauce, cooking up the meat, and preparing everything so it would be ready for the Sunday birthday dinner. Saturday evening once the kids were in bed we spent about 3 hours making the dough and stuffing the empanadas for cooking the next day. They were delicious! Every time we make them I try to convince Matt that we should sell them (or at least the chimichurri), but by the end of it, I realize why I would never do that - way too much work! Once a year is one thing, but to make money off of it is quite another!

Now to the most special event in my eyes - Audrey's Preschool Graduation! It was just tonight (Thursday Night) so the events of the evening are still fresh and bright in my mind. It was a delightful little program at the local library. Both classes of kids (there is a Tues/Thurs group and a Wed/Fri group) got up in front of everyone and recited a couple of rhymes and sang a couple of songs, and then each class did a little skit. Afterwards, each student was presented a certificate of completion of preschool (or as Audrey called it, her "terrificate!). Love it. She was so excited. She wore her favorite dress and we curled her hair, so she looked like a little princess up there. I'm so proud of her. I wish I could share all of her work with everyone, but I'll just post a few little things on here that she did. Hopefully this summer we'll be able to work on beginning reading!

Speaking of this summer, we have a super-duper big road trip planned. First stop is in Utah to take Grandpa's ashes back to his "happy hunting grounds", where he always requested to be laid to rest when he passed away. From there we will make our way down to the land of my birth, Texas, to see my Dad's new place and hopefully get to visit lots of friends and family. I'm super excited for the coming summer! I should have lots to blog about over the next few months!