Dear Family and Friends,

Birthday festivities have stretched over a couple of days for me which has been wonderful.  And I had the realization that in 12 days I will be on a plane to Barcelona (lots of excitement and small moments of panic over that one).  Feeling extremely spoiled and loved so thank you to everyone for their love and birthday wishes. 

Last night my friend Brenda threw a party for several couples.  We had a great time eating dinner and playing games.  And since 3 of us had birthdays that week she had cheesecake for dessert.  After 30 days of no sugar, it tasted really, really good.  And tonight kids are excited about their pieces of cheesecake waiting in the freezer.  Spencer was the only kid who really made it all month long as the girls cheated often.  But everyone did so much better than I thought they would.  Robyn despite great complaining got into the spirit of it and would ask our neighbor quite seriously as she chomped on her third s'more in his backyard if s'mores had sugar in them as she wasn't eating sugar.

We played a new game that was hilarious.  It is charades in reverse and we played men versus women.  All the men but 2 acted out the word while the other 2 tried to guess.  We will need to play it again.

On Friday my friend Brooke took Robyn home after preschool so I had most of the day to myself.  I got my hair done and went and had lunch with Jeremy.  Feels so strange and indulgent to have a middle of the day date!  Then that night Jeremy had a gig taking photos of a harpist at the Utah Symphony so I got to go along as his date.  Honestly it was a bit long and the seats got a little uncomfortable.  But the selections from Carmen were really cool.  The strange harp music made you wonder if the composer had decided to see how many weird and varied percussion instruments he could use. 

Last highlight of the week was that I got to go out shopping with my sister-in-law Kelly as she instructed me in wearing "cool" clothes.  She gave me red sparkly pointy high heeled shoes last year and zebra glitter flats and this year she gave me a gift card to her favorite store.  If I have any outfits that look good - it is thanks to her.

Rest of the week was full of church meetings, kid activities and everything else that fills up our days.  We changed up Spencer's meds a bit as paranoia was starting to creep back into his life.  Hopefully this will get things under control before we leave.  Had our team meeting for my Rangar team and changed the name from team "what the hill?" (loved the name but was a little embarrassed to wear the shirt with my kids) to team "steel magnolias - cause we're tough enough".  One of our runners is making us all magnolia flowers to clip into our headbands.  Should be cute.

We bought tickets this week to go see my brother Daniel and his family in Phoenix over spring break.  Nice guy that Jeremy is - he drives us out, flies home and works and then flies back and drives us back.  I am glad because 12 hours of driving by myself gets a little intimidating.  The day after he booked his tickets he found out that his work is flying out with wives for a few days in San Francisco at the same time.  But as a consolation prize he is getting a new monitor for his office instead so we are all happy.

Allison is excited to have a speaking part in this year's school play so she has been busy carrying around her script and trying to speak in an Asian accent.  Taylor is down with a snotty nose cold and makes me really wish he could blow his nose.  Spencer has re-discovered magic tricks - guess I needed a lesson in patience.  Robyn is just bouncing around everywhere and with a friend whenever she can.  So life is good.

Love, Heather