28 - ain't it great

Part 1 of the summer recap:

I had a birthday at the beginning of June. I wanted to celebrate with good friends and good food. Unfortunately the weather didn't want to cooperate and the date I originally planned to celebrate turned out wet and cold...not ideal for an outdoor dinner party. So we postponed until the following weekend - which worked out so that Bryce could get laid off a few days before the festivities.

Yes, Bryce got laid off at the beginning of June and was out of work until mid-July which made the birthday and Father's Day and anniversary festivities a little less festive and a lot more stressful, but it all worked out. The problem with getting laid off is that you never know how long it will take before you are employed again, so even if you have money in savings you feel like you can't spend any of it because you might need every last penny if you are still unemployed in six months or a year or what-have-you. And while you'd like to say "Hey, we should use this unexpected free time and go on vacation or re-do the master bedroom or finish the downstairs bath, etc." you don't because you don't want to spend the money. And then you go back to work and have no time to do any of those things again. Being unemployed is definitely not my favorite state of being. We were fortunate to end up no worse for the wear.

One of the first things we did after involuntarily losing our income was to cancel the cable tv. Which led to 2010 being the Summer of No Television. I thought the boys would go into withdrawals, but they were perfectly happy to just watch the occasional movie. I, on the other hand, found my kid-free evenings rather boring and was missing my Food Network shows. Settling for Top Chef on hulu.com just doesn't cut it.

So back to the birthday. I had a birthday. I spent the morning taking the boys to one of their summer movies at the Scera, then had lunch with some friends, then waited for Bryce to come home, then took Will to his baseball practice, and finished with dinner at the Olive Garden and cake back at home.

I tried to keep Sawyer occupied on the playground while Will had baseball. This lasted about 5 minutes and then he went back to whining that he wanted to play baseball too.

Care bear stare.

The following week we had our cook-out. "Now everybody turn around so no one will be identifiable on the internet. Good job." (Yes, this is the best and only picture I had.) It's good to have friends. In my head, this party was supposed to look like this:

(image from jordanferney.blogspot.com via google images)

I'd say we came pretty close. The pompoms on the fence really did it. Did I mention that it is good to have friends who don't care that your parties don't look like this?