Turning 39 and other weekend news...

For my birthday, my wonderful husband arranged for the girls to stay with our pastor and his wife overnight. He then whisked me away to Hood River - our favorite place to go. We had a wonderful dinner, drank some good wine and had fun celebrating. Our hotel room overlooked the Columbia River and the view was gorgeous.

On Saturday evening, we celebrated with the girls. They decorated the house and then went to get Chinese food and ice cream cake.

Kayleigh serenaded me while Sydney and Kevin sang Happy Birthday.

All throughout last week the August fairy and August dragon made several appearances, leaving sweet notes and chocolates.

Since I have the only summer birthday, it's becoming a tradition to have ice cream cake. They picked this one out at DQ and the woman offered to write something on it. Knowing how much I hate snakes, the girls thought it would be funny to write Happy Snakes. So they did.... and I laughed.

Tonight is our annual church picnic...it's been raining off and on all day so we'll see how it goes. I made these "prairie sushi rolls" (cream cheese with basil and chives, tortillas, carrots, cucumbers and turkey). They look pretty don't they?

I also made a lot of deviled eggs. Kevin took the girls early to help set up and I used the alone time to play with and then photograph my food.

We also have a pie baking contest and I made 2 entries....triple chocolate s'mores pie (graham cracker crust, milk chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate - in layers - and topped with marshmallows)

And a grasshopper pie....oreo crust, marshmallow, mint and whipped cream filling with andes mints along the outer edge and chocolate curls in the center. A friend is bringing a sprig of fresh mint to put in the center. I even made the chocolate curls myself!

And finally....another pet has died. Gandalf the leopard gecko was acting quite weird this past week and when we woke up we saw that he had died.