Birthday Interview

Western Day at Good News Camp (Ian also wore a bandana)

I am only four days late with Oliver's birthday interview, which is better than I did with Nadia's birthday earlier this summer. I started to record the video and the battery on the camcorder died. I plugged in the camcorder and then started over again. It was interesting to me that Oliver gave different answers to the questions that I asked both times. The first time he said his favorite food was pizza and his favorite thing to do outdoors was throw water balloons. The second time he said his favorite food was carrots and his favorite thing to do outdoors is the spinning seesaw. He always says that green is his favorite color.

Thursday I picked the boys up at 2:30, Nadia up at 3:00, and then came home to pick up Paul. He came home much earlier than normal so we could go to Danville and sign our new wills and power of attorney documents. After taking care of that, we ran a few errands in Lewisburg and then drove to the West End Union County Fair where we watched a tractor pull, looked at livestock, ate some funnel cake and popcorn, and attended a 90 minute concert by Zach Williams. Altogether I spent a LOT of time in the minivan that day, which is part of the reason I'm looking forward to staying home all day today. Yesterday I watched the boys' closing program from 2:00-2:30 at Good News Camp. We picked Nadia up from theater camp at 3:00, picked up a few things at Aldi's (mostly fresh fruit), had breakfast sandwiches at Dunkin Donuts as our dinner, and then went to see a 4:00 showing of "Christopher Robin." The kids' tickets were free, and my ticket only cost 99 cents because of coupons from Juicy Juice. After going years without entering a movie theater, this summer has been very different for us as all five of us saw Incredibles 2, Paul took Nadia and Ian to see Solo, and I took the kids to see Christopher Robin. Altogether we spent less than $10 total to see those three movies. 

Today is our 17th anniversary, and tomorrow is Dad and Margie's first anniversary. My dad had surgery yesterday for a torn rotator cuff so they celebrated a little early. Margie broke some bones in her foot on their wedding day last year and had surgery for that subsequently so now the tables have turned and instead of Dad taking care of Margie now she'll be taking care of him as he recovers from the surgery. She is a retired nurse so she has more experience than my Dad although he certainly gained experience in 2016 during the last 6.5 months of my mom's life. Paul and I don't have any plans for celebrating our anniversary. He's at work today, and the kids and I are staying home sweet home. He took off work last Saturday originally so we could go to Pittsburgh but in the end we spent the day cleaning the mess from the flooding. He's taking off next Saturday so we can go to Niagara Falls (Lord willing). The two things we contemplated doing today were swimming (nope - it's pouring outside) and taking Nadia and Ian to a (free) production of Macbeth this evening. Paul *might* take the kids if they move it to an indoor location. I'll stay home with Oliver either way. Although it took us a lot longer to become parents than it does for most couples, our years as parents (10) is greater than our childless years (7). We are very, very grateful for our three miracles!