Forty or where there is wool and it is over my eyes

My birthday has unfortunately been the magnet on more than one occasion for calamitous and unpleasant events (illness, accidents, scabies, to name a few). DH is not good with occasions. He knows this. He doesn't know what to do, what to get, how to celebrate so he does nothing. (there was the year when he told his boss he'd forgotten Mother's Day and his boss sent him home from work mid day to FIX IT and not come back until he had fixed it--and as a future admonition, this Stake President said that if it were ever a question of breaking the Sabbath because he forgot or doing nothing for Mother's Day again, DH was strongly counseled to break the Sabbath) So, knowing he was bad at birthdays and knowing that 40 can be a big deal, DH started asking me (somewhat at the behest of my baby sister) what I wanted for my birthday. And then other people began to ask and I got seriously bugged. Because the list of what I really wanted went like this (what I sent to another sister):

Things I want for my birthday: to be 50 lb lighter, to have time and money to spend, a macbook, a vacation, a husband who can come home, children who don't whine, fight or lose their belongings, more hours in the day, sleep, all of my loved ones to move in on my street so that they will rename it people who love Ang street and then we can all play together. So basically, all things no one has the capacity to give me.

Yeah, just a wee bit grumpy. Eventually, I was just hoping to get through the weekend, have a quiet dinner and cake with family, care for broken husband and move on. Then, shortly before the surgery, my mom called and asked if she could fly in for the weekend and 1) help with husband, 2) celebrate my birthday and 3) get some weather relief (much snow and cold in her neck of the woods and her asthma was bad). I was excited. So, after getting kidlets off to school Friday morning and picking up DH's shiny new handicapped placard at DMV (because it was handicapped, I avoided several lines and it only took 45 minutes), I picked my mom up at the airport. Yeah! Friday night, DH had made arrangements for his dad to help him with a birthday pick up (because despite his new placard, I said he was in no condition to drive, what with the Lortab and all) and so he and CE and Grandpa Bill went off to get whatever it was and I put kidlets to bed.

This is what he picked up:



and this is what I did (with the sister who had been taking the first picture and then with everyone else):


All of us together:


There could not have been a better present (well short of everyone actually moving here) for me. Their visit was short. DH was still an invalid. But we made the best of it. We hung out in the hot tub:



We got pedicures (well, mom got a manicure):


We even dragged the invalid out to dinner with us to Maggiano's, a yummy family style Italian restaurant that even Brooke, the former Italian missionary sister could approve of. That night we watched a late chick flick and fell into bed.

Sunday morning, my actual birthday, dawned with my sisters making me breakfast, my mother curling CE's hair for church. Cakes and dinner were made, we went to church (even DH went to sacrament meeting, although he paid for all this frolicking later) and then we came home to have yummy food and time with family. It was too short, but it always would be. I took two loads of sisters to the airport last night and my mother to the airport this morning. I cannot think of a better way to spend my fortieth birthday, despite the ensuing exhaustion of which we will now dig out. I love my family. I can't imagine a better girls' weekend. What a lovely lovely surprise!