Update

Apparently I'm unable to write a steady blog this summer. It's not as if I'm overwhelmingly busy or anything, I guess I just don't have much inspiration right now. I figured since it's been 20 days since I last posted I would give you all a random update which is obviously all I'm able to do lately if you read through my last few posts.

Today is Keith's birthday so we've had a fun weekend. Yesterday his parents came over and watched Garrett so that we could go out and celebrate. You know "celebrating" might mean more to some than others. But to a married couple with a (soon-to-be) 3 year old, it simply means to spend time away from your child(ren). You can't get much more celebratory than the lack of whining at dinner coupled with nobody screaming "I lost my shoe!" in the car. And celebrate we did.

Let's see... First we went to the movies (the number 1 place where we simply cannot go with our child unless we're seeing something with talking animals or living inanimate objects). We saw "The Dark Knight" which was really good. It lives up to its name and is definitely a "dark" movie as far as superhero movies go, but it's not depressingly so. After the movie we really lived it up and made a stop at Toys R Us. Garrett's birthday party is next weekend and we had yet to buy him anything and we needed to get some presents so he didn't try to emancipate himself from us. Dinner was next on the agenda so of course we hit up our favorite restaurant, I'm sure you can all repeat after me by now, Texas Roadhouse. It was yummy, as always. We then rounded out this kick-butt night by heading to the place where all couples go on their dates-Walmart. Yes, we're lame, please don't feel the need to point that out to me. I can assure you that we did not buy any groceries, so you can all breathe a sigh of relief. However we did buy baby wipes, along with vitamins, a magazine, a t-shirt for Garrett, and picked up a prescription. We were living large, let me tell you.

Today for the actual event we met up with some friends for lunch at the Spaghetti Warehouse. They have a 3 and a half year old son so we commisserate with each other while our boys yell and drop food and attempt to empty the salt shakers. After lunch the birthday boys (the husband of our couple friend had a birthday 3 days ago) got to spend some kid-free time by checking out some gun shops (their choice, not ours, the women would have went to Target if given the choice). We contemplated what to do but decided that the best choice was to take our 2 maniacs to her house so they could destroy the other kid's room while she and I visited in relative peace. The boys actually played well together and I enjoyed the company of my friend. I believe Keith has had a good birthday (minus my cake fiasco this morning. Let's just say that the recipe that I used does not allow for a cake to be baked in 2 small, round pans and now, 12 hours later, my house still smells like slightly burnt cake, yum.)

So we move from celebrating Keith's birthday to celebrating Garrett's next weekend. We're partying a month early because my family will all be in town. I'm so excited to have them here for Garrett's birthday. It's the first party for him that they've been able to make it so I'm really happy that this is working out. This will actually be Garrett's first time to be around both sets of grandparents at the same time so it should be interesting. I've got the cake ordered, the party supplies waiting in the closet, and the gifts hidden. (Well, hidden better than they were earlier today. Garrett found them, drug them out and asked "Are these Garrett's?" I told him yes, but they were for his birthday so he had to wait to get them. Keith told him later that they were actually for his friend. I'm sure he's really confused, hopefully he'll forget he ever saw them until they're unwrapped on Friday. They've since been rehidden and I now have to rethink my usual hiding spot for gifts.)

The gifts were a debate this year. The past 2 birthdays I've just gone out and bought toys or clothes that Garrett needed. Obviously I know that no toys are actually "needed" but what boy should live his life without a mini basketball goal? I would classify that as a need. :) This year Keith wanted some input into the gifts and I know that his input will become more and more the older Garrett gets, which is completely fine with me. At first we planned to buy him one of those nice, wooden swingsets that will last for years and won't tip over when more than one child is swinging. Unfortunately when you buy one brand new you're basically buying a used car as far as the prices are concerned, so a brand new one is temporarily out of the question (we've since found a couple different options but none that would be here by Friday so we'll see...). We then went on to look at used ones for sale and some people think their swingsets are made from 24k gold apparently. I'm not paying $600 for a rotten piece of wood that probably wouldn't survive being moved 2 feet much less 50 miles. So we gave up that dream. We then thought about buying him one of those electric cars. But after looking at Toys R Us' inventory, that's not happening either. How do some of these families own those kinds of toys and not only do they own them, but they leave them to sit outside in the weather. You can't buy one for less than $300 and that just seems like an awful lot of money for a toy that my child will outgrow in a couple of years. But Daddy is still considering one for Christmas so we may end up with one despite my objections. I threw around the idea of buying him an easel because he really likes to color, but I couldn't find one so we settled on buying him a train set and a Spiderman action figure. I think he will really like those.

All right that's pretty much it, I guess. I should have a better way to wrap this thing up but I'm tired. Garrett hasn't been sleeping well the past couple of nights because we both have colds and his always result in a bad cough. Saturday morning he was up at 5 am hacking up a lung which lead to him staying up for the rest of the day. Which meant that I was up for the rest of the day. I do NOT miss the newborn stage, that's for sure.