What a Weekend!

We have had so much going on at our house lately!

Eli has started his own version of crawling and while it's not a traditional crawl it gets him where he wants to go fast!  We have been re-baby proofing our house, something I thought we had done a long time ago.  But we are finding new things everyday.  The first issue we noticed was the dirt and dog hair Eli was picking up from the area rug in our living room.  We have tile floors throughout our whole house with only one area rug in the living room so rather than buy a vacuum we have been using our shop-vac type vacuum.  We thought it was doing an adequate job, but not so much.  So we got a Dyson vacuum and it is amazing how much it picks up.  The first time we ran it over the rug we got all of this

And that was AFTER we vacuumed with our old vacuum.  We also had to lower Eli's crib mattress which made it possible for him to reach the outlet where our video monitor was plugged in.  So we put in a new outlet above a shelf in his room so now there is no way he'll ever be able to reach the plug or the cord without the using a ladder :)
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We have a safe in Doug's closet that holds all of Logan's stuff and last Thursday I was sitting in there looking at it all and I had Eli sitting right outside the doorway, which happens to be right next to Levi's kennel.  Doug came in the room and started looking at the scrapbook with me and I look up and Eli has pulled himself up using the kennel.  He was so proud of himself!  He kind of looked like he was in jail with the bars of the kennel so Doug went to go grab a phone to take a picture.  He ended up grabbing his work phone and took a couple of pictures and then handed it to me while he went to find our real camera.  I was looking at the last picture he took and hit the back button so I could see the others when I noticed a picture of a bracelet that I had told Doug I wanted.  I questioned him about the picture and he made up a story.  I knew what he told me wasn't true.  Right after Logan died, someone gave me a bracelet with his name and birthstone.  I wore it ALL the time and I guess I wore it out cause one day it broke and some of the beads got lost.  Since that day I have been talking about getting a new bracelet, but never got around to it.  Then when Eli was born I decided that I wanted a bracelet that could symbolize all of my children.  The bracelet in the picture was a "charm" type bracelet with removable beads so I assumed the bracelet was a gift for me for Logan's birthday. Little did I know what he was up to!

As far as I knew, we didn't have any plans for the weekend.  My mom and dad were supposed to be visiting to help my sister with some projects at her house and to help us put in the new outlet in Eli's room.  My grandma has been sick and my mom has been staying with her in KY for the past few weeks.  My mom was planning to come home late last week but then my grandma started having some new symptoms.  I told my sister that there was no way mom would be coming with Grandma not feeling well so we made plans for my dad to come down just for Saturday.

That morning Doug decided to mow the grass and I was just picking up around the house when my sister called.  She said she wanted me to go to Walmart with her because she wanted to pick out Eli's birthday present but didn't know what to get him.  I thought it was a little strange that she was worried about it this early, but then again we've already bought our presents and are planning the party, so it wasn't that weird :)  We went to Walmart and I called Doug as we were leaving so that he could start the grill for lunch.  When we got to the house Lauren got out of the car.  Again, a little weird since my dad was at her house working, but she said she wanted to see Eli real quick before she left.

When I walked in the door I heard "SURPRISE!" and saw lots of balloons and a Happy Birthday sign. My first thought was "who are all these people?" and then I realized that my dad and my mom were there, as well as my brother-in-law and two of our best friends.  The next thought I had was that they were surprising me by being there to celebrate Logan's birthday.  A little bit of a strange surprise party, but what else could it possibly be??  Then Doug steps forward and asks if I know "what today is?", I was frantically searching my mind trying to figure out how June 25 related to Logan.  Then he said "Today... well, really tomorrow, is your 26 1/2 Birthday".  Only then did I get the real surprise!

My birthday is the day after Christmas.  Christmas isn't a great time of the year to have a birthday because we're always doing Christmas stuff.  My grandpa shares my same birthday so as a kid we always spent it with our large extended family.  My parents would celebrate my birthday in the morning before we left (or I would have a party a week before or sometimes after) and my aunt usually had a cake that included me in the Happy Birthday saying.  When we moved to Alabama we started to celebrate my birthday on the actual day, but I still couldn't have a party cause everyone else was busy with Christmas.  When Doug and I got married we started visiting his family or mine for "Christmas" on my birthday.  And I always enjoy spending time with our families.  But it was sooo nice to be surprised with a real birthday party!  And my in-laws came too, although they didn't get to be there for the big surprise because they are small business owners and had to wait for closing before they could come up.

Doug got me an ice cream cake and Eli got his first taste of any kind of desert.  He loved it! What can I say, he is Doug's child after all :)

I'm not sure you can tell in this picture, but in between Happy and Birthday there is a 26.5

There were 26 decorated balloons plus 5 plain pink balloons to represent the .5.  My mom said she tried to get them to half inflate one balloon but they couldn't seem to understand how they would do that.

My bracelet!  The angel charm represents Logan, the green is for Doug who was born in May, the one with the blue stones on the left is for me (December) and the pink is for Eli's October birthday because we haven't seen any Opal charms and the alternate birthstone is Pink Tourmaline.

That night after everyone else left, Doug, my dad, and my brother-in-law put in the new outlet while my mom, sister and I worked on some more things for Eli's party.  There's still plenty of work to do, but we did make Eli a party hat and I finished up Eli's birthday bib.

Then on Sunday, Doug, Eli and I celebrated Logan's birthday.  We went out to the cemetery and brought new flowers, balloons and a little dump truck we had picked out.  When we first got there I put the balloons down and the wind kept blowing them right into the flowers.  I wanted to take a picture and was hoping they would stay straight or at least blow in the opposite direction.  So I told Logan that's what I wanted and asked him to change the wind.  Yes, I talk to him and ask for silly favors like that.  I even scolded him in early June because every single day for the first week of the month he sent me a spider and they still creep me out, so one day I just flat told him to stop sending them, that I got the message and knew he was with me. I haven't seen a spider since, I've seen plenty of other bugs, but no spiders, not even at the cemetery which is where we usually see 2 or 3 :)

Anyways, I sat Eli down on a blanket beside Logan's stone so that we could get a picture of him sitting there and all of a sudden, the wind changed.  It was like Logan was hugging Eli!  Let me show you in pictures

This is actually a "tame wind" picture.  I didn't take any when the wind was pushing the balloons directly into the flowers.

Pretty amazing, huh? We put the weight that was holding the balloons behind the stone so it was blowing forward and to the right!  (You can actually kind of see how the wind was blowing the balloons before I sat Eli down in the picture I posted yesterday.  It was taken after these, but it was doing pretty much the same thing.)

We didn't do much the rest of the day except have pudding cake, which Eli loved just as much as he loved the ice cream cake.  I was kind of surprised because I didn't think he'd like the texture of the cake, but I guess he's just a desert lover.

I also made a paper chain counting down the days until Eli's birthday.  Just 98 days from today... and only 96 until his party!