I'm 33 today!!!!

Well folks, today I added yet another number to my every-increasing age!! lol  I just LOVE birthdays.  One never knows what suprises the day may hold!!!  Today was made special by a bunch of different people.  I thought I'd take a moment to share before bedtime......

First, let's talk about a sweet little night owl in our house.  This little STINKER kept me up until 12:30AM!!!  So I guess you could say, technically, I started celebrating by staying up very, VERY, VERY late!!!!  Well, despite the fact that I went to bed LATE....my alarm still went off at 6:00AM.  I forced myself up and out of bed and into my workout clothes.  It was off across the street to put in 3 miles of walking with a friend, Angie.  She gave me a b-day after we exercised!  My first for the day!!!!  Then, it was back home to pack Duane's lunch and make sure all the boys remembered everything they were supposed to take to school.  Callie was supposed to wake up to start her school work.  Duane tried several times.  She went back to bed and went to sleep.  He put her on the couch.  Bang....out like a light AGAIN!!!  I tried several times...finally gave up....she was NOT going to wake up!!  Man, wish I could sleep like this 'angel' below.....She finally did wake up around 9:30AM and acted as chipper as an early morning bird tweeting merrily in the treetops. 

 I started doing some cleaning up around the house and received several birthday phone calls.  My e-mail inbox was also flooded with FB birthday messages and even a birthday wish on my blog.  Amidst all that, I received a birthday wish clear from the Philippines!!!!  My dear sister-in-law and brother-in-law(who are missionaries there) called to sing 'Happy Birthday' to me in Ilocano.  That was a special treat that brought tears to my eyes.  Callie immediately had to sing happy birthday to me....She sang it probably a dozen or more times over the course of the day.  Finally I had to record it to share with you.....

There was JUST enough time for a quick shower before heading out to my birthday lunch.  My sister-in-law, Tina, had called and wanted to treat me to lunch.  I chose a new-to-me restaurant, Chipotle.  It was FANTASTIC!!!  Super YUMMY!!!!  It was a special treat to be able to eat out for lunch and I enjoyed it so much!!  My nephews wanted us to ride in their car with them, so we left my van in the parking lot and off we went shopping.  A trip to Hobby Lobby yielded no purchases but a deep desire to re-decorate our bedroom in black and white.  It's amazing what kind of ideas one gets from seeing a piece of fabric!!!  I'm thinking we should probably finish the enormouse hallway/entry project before jumping into the bedroom re-do!! lol  I was super-excited with my find at the Goodwill!!!  Some dri-fit exercise tops for $3 a piece!!!!  YAY!!!!!  I would have never thought to look there, but someone had mentioned that idea to me this very morning.  Glad I checked!  Did a few more errands and it was off to pick the boys up from school and teach 5 lessons.  One of my students, my nephew, wrote a sweet birthday message in his staff book for me to see!!!  That was extra-special to me.  After finishing teaching, I took off on a 2 mile walk.  This made 6 total miles for the day.  I had a goal of completing 33 miles in the week before my birthday and finished walking that last 6 on my birthday.  Gotta walk off some of that birthday food.  :) 
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We enjoyed a spinach/chicken salad for my birthday meal and the kids baked and decorated a cake for me.  I posed with the cake...here's what I looked like at the end of the day.....frizzy,wind-blown hair, tired-looking, but happy!!!

I blew out the candles, but didn't eat a crumb.  I try to avoid gluten when at all possible.  I had to eat some gluten-laden foods over the weekend and have really been feeling icky....so I got away with not having to taste it. :)  I did enjoy a big bowl of my favorite ice cream from Deitch's.....Buckeye ice cream is the BEST!!!

A special card from Simon.  Can't wait to cash in on this one!!

After dinner, Duane took me out to the mall to buy me a birthday gift.  I wanted something exercise related--  shoes, a running jacket or a Garmin(apparantly he looked for one of these for me, but they were not to be found here in our town.)  I picked out these new shoes at the Finish Line.  I also got some cushy gel inserts.....ahhhhh......they feel dreamy compared to the clearance running shoes I purchased 6 weeks ago.  I can't wait to try these out tomorrow morning. 

So there you have it, my birthday.....it's off to bed for me!!! 

What I do when my Internet connection is severed!!!!!

POUT ABOUT IT......

then I finally decide maybe it's time to catch up on all the unfinished tasks around the house. No........that doesn't appeal to me. I decide to stay up late, practicing a neglected saxaphone, (much to the annoyance of the rest of the house), clean a little, & do crazy hairstyles!!!!!

What do you do without internet??????
:->

I'm back!!!!!!!!!! (With my hair higher than ever!) Thursday evening, our Internet stopped working. After a call to AT&T, it was decided that our router was bad. They told us it would take 3-5 business days to ship us a new one. That didn't make me very happy with all the recital stuff I have been doing online. I was pleasantly surprised to find one arriving via UPS today. It only took 2 business days! Yes!!!!! Now back to finishing up all those last minute details for my Spring Recital.

~Me...at the ripe old age of 30~

I finally had the time to get some 30th. photos of myself. Both photo sessions were not planned, so it was stress-free. No worries about what to wear or how my hair looked. How I looked when we spontaneously decided to take the photos was how I looked! The first 3 pictures are taken outside with this HUGE tree as the background. (I did a post about the tree in November.) The rest of the pictures were taken in my music studio with the assortment of instruments that I play...or at least try to :) Make sure you don't miss the last picture posted....just for fun! :)

~Photography by my wonderful sister-in-law, Sarah~

Me with my violin, viola, chincello, flute, piccolo, soprano sax, piccolo & piano.

The piano in the picture was my very first Christmas gift when I was 6 months old.

And one last one.....just for fun!

~Regina's first donut eating contest~

This is a clip of adults and kids participating in a donut eating contest at the 4th. grade Christmas party. It was the kids against the adults. The adults won! Yeah!!!!!!!!! It was a lot of fun watching everyone try to catch the donut dangling from the string! Enjoy!

Columbus.....and back home again!

Last Saturday, Laura & I spent the day in Columbus. We spent most of the day in the Blue Moon Event Center learning all about the products of BeautiControl. You see we both bought the Consultant packages and had to attend the training seminar before we could get Part 2 of the package. We sat through about 5 hours of training!!!!! The fun part was going out to eat twice in one day without 4 kids along, shopping without pushing a double stroller and two more kids beside the stroller, and seeing the stadium where the Ohio State Buckeyes were playing at the very moment we passed it and I snapped the picture to the right of this blog post. The un-fun part of the day was getting up at 5:15AM to leave! That was WAY TOO EARLY! The funny part about that was Duane having to get up and drive me to Laura's house. You see, he forgot his keys at work and had no spares at home. So.....in order to have transportation while I was gone the entire day, he had to get up out of his nice warm bed, along with ALL 4 of our kids and drive me across town. To be honest, I'm kinda glad he forgot his keys, I really didn't want to drive myself anywhere that early in the morning! I figured everyone would go back to bed...but I guess they all stayed up!!!! It was very nice to have an entire day off.

We arrived back home at around 7:00PM. The kids all came running up, giving me big hugs and telling me how much they missed me. I had to go straight to my laptop and finish a digital scrapbook and get it ordered. The coupon for the FREE book expired at midnight that night! I had most of it finished. I basically had to proof-read it and swap around 2 pictures. Simon got my camera and snapped the shot of me. The two older boys are enjoying being able to take pictures with the digital camera and seeing them right away! He tried to take a picture of both he and I together.....it didn't quite turn out! :) Later Duane went out and got pizza for everyone and than put all the kids to bed for me! Wow! It was wonderful having an entire day off!