Three November birthdays for...

three special people in our family. I totally meant to post this last night as it was Matt's birthday and wanted it to fall under my NOVEMBER folder, but oh well. I'm not wonder woman, ya know! Fall, for us, means lots of birthdays to celebrate. We began at the first of the month, celebrating my Mom's on November 13th. My grandparents and uncle came to BG that day.

I cherish my time with all of them (especially Mike) even more these days. I realize how fragile life is and how special we need to treat those we love.

It's always hard to tell who is more excited about the celebration of birthdays in our family--the birthday person or the kids. I don't think an adult in our family has blown out their birthday candles for years =). I love it! I mean REALLY, I kind of stopped celebrating the birthday years after I turned 30. Now, birthdays come about as quickly as Christmas. And, my body tells me daily how old I'm getting and feel and how tired I am all the time. As Sue Maglinger once put it (after being knocked over by a wave at the beach), "the Golden Years SUCK." It's my blog, so I can say SUCK, can't I???

Onto the next special birthday in our family~Nana Debbie Deaton celebrated on the 26th. I was especially excited about Debbie's birthday this year because I made her a movie. Yeah, you heard me, a REAL movie. Look out James Cameron, there's a new Kathryn Bigelow in the hood and NO, I'm not interested in becoming your 6th wife. Colvin had a surprise 35th renewing of the marriage vows for Debbie back in late August. I got it all on video and wanted to try to make her a movie of it. I thought to myself, that would make a nice birthday gift. SO, I trained myself in iMovie and picked Paul's brain about a couple of things and viola, made a movie and burned it to iDVD. My ideal job would be to work on a Hollywood movie set (I imagine MOST people would love to do that, maybe not?). I got a tiny taste of movie making with this project and hope to do more (with kids videos, etc.). Back to the birthday, Karson and I made Debbie some delicious cupcakes but I had decided to purchase her a GiGi's gift card (my baking skills aren't the best). I would've gotten a picture of Debbie blowing out her candles but Miles managed to puff them out right when he walked in so the above and below shots were about ALL I got from Debbie's birthday. We sure do love NANA!!! And, she sure loved her DVD.

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Last but not least, we celebrated Matt's yesterday. Karson and I made a Wal-Mart run after basketball practice on Monday night. Okay, so maybe you readers out there think this is totally lame, but I'm not the greatest at gift giving especially when it comes to Matt. I'm not sure why but he's simply not a stuff-mart kind of guy. He likes books, music, semi-important things. He and I made a Kohl's run the other night to pick up some new digs for his student teaching in the spring. SO, he's set on the clothes front. I had NO idea what to get him. Here's what his gift bag consisted of: a Sports Illustrated magazine, a Kentucky koozie, some Eclipse gum and new underwear. I would've have included vitamins but thought those might be a little to practical--HAH. Everything in that bag was practical. Karson was tickled to pieces with our purchases. We also picked up a chocolate cake. That's just how Matt and I roll. We buy the things we need and want usually when we need or want them. I usually get my bday gifts and he gets his.

He picked Gattiland for his restaurant of choice for his birthday. We met Paul, Shannon, Daniel, Lisa and kids for some fun at pizza-land. The pizza's delicious but the game room, not so fun. It usually turns into a disaster as the kids pump in their tokens and receive very little ticket yield. $5 Tootsie rolls, oh yeah! Matt spent most of his birthday money and evening in the game room with crying kids =). Incidentally, I forgot my camera, but we had a super time. NOW, onto the next round of celebrations in December. Good Bye November, you sure did go by quickly.