Happy Birthday to me!

I had a pretty good day on my birthday yesterday. I am now 39. I don't mind telling everyone how old I am because I know I don't look my age.

My stepmom, my sister, my 6 year old niece and my daughters and I all went to the mall and had a fun girl's day out. I never go to the mall. I'm too used to buying clothes for $1.99!

The Christmas gifts (blouses) my parents had given the girls were too small, so yesterday they got to pick out new tops at the mall. Because my stepmom and sister were with us Kitty was well behaved, at the mall anyway.

It's funny seeing Kitty around my niece. In a lot of ways they are about the same age. My niece doesn't really like Kitty though. She prefers Bob (which makes Kitty a little upset). My niece loves that Bob can pick her up and carry her (something my sister can't do anymore). Plus, Kitty frequently has issues with body odor (although not so much lately).

We spent the morning cleaning the house for when my stepmom came to visit. This would be the first time she's seen the house in a year so I wanted to make a good impression. In the past I've had Kitty help with the cleaning, but she ALWAYS ends up having a meltdown, and after the one she had a few days ago, I decided not to deal with that again. Since we reduced Kitty's chores recently she doesn't have any downstairs chores so I just had everyone do their downstairs chores that they didn't do during the week. This meant Kitty didn't need to do anything.

She still did some whining and crying. Mean old mommy had asked her to bring down her dirty clothes and pee soaked blankets so I could wash them. (The pictures at the top are how her room looked AFTER I had her bring down her laundry. All blankets on the floor are pee-soaked. *sigh*) Hubby didn't think I should take her with me, but I wanted to give him a break (his birthday is Tuesday). The boys went bike riding with my dad.

We shopped for 4 hours!

Hubby had to take Ponito to a slumber party birthday party. Bear mowed a neighbor's yard so earned some cash. It will be interesting to see how fast he burns through the money he made. Unfortunately my mom thinks she smelled tobacco chew on him so I'll need to seach all of his stuff again. *sigh*

I made cheeseburger quiche (family fav) and blueberry and rhubarb pie. It wasn't done until late so we didn't get the kids to Grandma's house to spend the night until after 9pm! Bob started begging for me to take her out of school early on TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) testing day. She'd thought they had an early release and had made plans to go visit the private school. She got angry with me and then started sobbing. She missed her friends at private school and I was mean for not taking her out of school so she could visit. *sigh*

Date night with Hubby, but it was late. We rented and watched a movie (I don't even remember what it was) and then went to sleep.

Hubby was teaching scuba and had to be there at the crack of dawn. I got to sleep in, but was called at 8am to tell me about the change in lunch plans that I already knew about. Couldn't go back to sleep of course. *sigh*