This is how we do it

Let them eat cake!

This week the big news was Ronnie's 30th birthday! We had a busy week leading up to the festivities but were able to enjoy each other as a family this weekend. Friday night I took Ronnie to a fun restaurant in San Mateo. Rosa watched the kids so we were able to have a nice LONG, relaxing dinner. We ate 4 full courses, sat and talked, and even got to hold hands while at dinner. We were going to go see a movie but there weren't many that we were too interested in so we came home early and watched a rental on the hide-a-bed.

Saturday morning, on his actual birthday, Ronnie woke up early to go running. In continuing his marathon training, he ran 16 miles, many of which were in the rain. While running, Madison and I decorated the house with balloons, streamers and banners to surprise Ronnie when he got home. We then had a yummy breakfast and spent the day together.

Sunday after church I made him his favorite dinner, lemon chicken, and then had cake and ice cream. Madison loves a good party and was so thrilled that daddy's birthday lasted all weekend long! She was even pleased to help pop all the balloons while cleaning up the decorations.

I think Ronnie enjoyed his birthday and like his friend Carson (another recent entrant to his 30's) told him, he can now refer to himself as a thirty-something and have it sound so much older and mature than 28 or 29 ever did! His parents, my parents, and I all pitched in and got him a heart rate monitor running
watch. It is like a computer on his wrist. It can tell his heart rate, keeping him in the correct zone. It tells his pace and distance, and then he can link it to the computer at home and chart his performance. It's pretty cool, I think he will really get into it once he can figure out everything that it does, the instruction manual is a good read in itself.

The kids are both doing well; finally all healthy and happy! Madison's primary teacher told me that she has been volunteering each Sunday to say the prayer in class. She loves to give talks, say prayers, and bear her testimony. It is fun to come home and be able to really talk to her about what she learned at church. I teach my CTR 8 class the same lessons that she learns in her CTR 5 class. If you ask her what class she is in, she will tell you, "CTR 5, but I am 4." She has to make sure you don't get confused. The primary sang a song in church on Sunday and the Bishop came up to Ronnie afterwards and said he had fun watching Madison squeeze through all of the big kids to the front of the stand so that everyone would be able to see her sing. She has been doing a lot of letter writing lately. She knows how to write all of her letters now and will ask me to spell things for her to write down. Or, she will tell me what to write as she dictates a story or two. It is always entertaining and she often likes to sing songs that are nothing but a string of letters. Her favorite is to repeat "M-a-d-i-s-o-n" over and over.

Beckham is still working on the crawling. I am in no hurry to see him accomplish this little milestone. My apartment is not baby proof yet and I am not looking forward to doing it. Our apartment is getting so small for our growing family and there just isn't much room to put things. I think I may start pulling his legs out from under him each time he tries to crawl. He has been charming our ward lately. As Priest Quroum advisor, Ronnie trades off teaching on Sunday's with the Young Men's president. When it is his week to teach, a nice lady in our ward, whose kids have all grown up, will come and take Bex for the last hour. It is really nice, she just hunts Ronnie down and kidnaps our little man for the hour. He gets to go to Relief society and flirt with all the ladies. He is getting pretty good at it.

That's about it from here. We hope you all have a great week! We miss you!