It’s the pictures-of-me birthday post

You asked for it, so Mr. FG and Joshua took over with the picture-taking a bit. This never goes quite how I’d like it to (it would be so much easier if I could just have a quick out of body experience so that I could take the pictures myself!), but given my “an imperfect picture is better than no picture” philosophy, I’m happy to settle for whatever they can take. 😉

I got some presents from my little family on Wednesday night, which was my actual birthday.

Actually, scratch that. Mr. FG gave me a present early in the morning before he left for work because he is the most impatient present-giver on the planet.

I’m surprised I managed to convince him to even wait until my birthday at all.

Anyhoo. He gave me a pewter and ribbon bookmark, which will do a nice job of replacing the paper scrap I currently use as a bookmark.

And then when he came home from work, he gave me this:

I’ve always loved sapphires, and he did buy me a sapphire ring back when Joshua was a baby. But one of the sapphires fell out, and it was a yellow gold ring, and I don’t wear a lot of yellow gold these days. So, now I have a lovely silver sapphire ring and I love it!

He assured me that he got a screaming deal on it, which made me happy. I’d hate for him to have dropped several hundred dollars on a very unnecessary ring for me.

I loooove my ring….I feel so fancy-schmancy when I’m wearing it. 😉

And, as if I wasn’t spoiled enough, after dinner he gave me a set of black pearls (which he also got a great deal on, but not QUITE as a great a deal as the ring).

Lisey was very pleased that I got some black pearls because she got some for her birthday.

We tried to have Joshua take a picture of us in our pearls (though of course Zoe’s pink and white ones aren’t real. 😉 ).

Pretty blurry.

I really should stop talking when someone is trying to take my picture. Or maybe Joshua should stop shooting while I’m giving instructions?

Lightscoop to the rescue! We finally got a more acceptable photo that way.

Incidentally, LightScoops are great for when you’re handing your kind of complicated camera off to someone who’s not used to it. The LightScoop lets you use the flash (which makes for more foolproof shooting) without letting the flash completely ruin the picture.

The kids got me a number of mint/chocolate treats and also a bottle of my favorite body spray (I thought they might have done that because when they came home from shopping, Sonia and Zoe were pretty odoriferous. I assumed they’d sampled some spray at the store.).

So, after presents I had an ice cream cake for dessert. Ice cream cake is the best sort of purchased cake you can get, in my opinion, so it’s always my birthday cake of choice (Mr. FG doesn’t really dabble in cake-baking).

He did put some very tenacious trick candles on my birthday cake.

I think I blew them out 10 times or so before they gave up.

I chose to stay home for dinner on my actual birthday and go out the following night. Why? Because on Thursdays, kids eat free at California Tortilla.

My frugality will not be stopped by a mere birthday.

You only get one free kids meal per adult meal, which means we get two free. But since Sonia and Zoe are little and have appetites to match their size, they can split a meal, which means we only have to buy one kids meal.

That makes me happy, of course.

The girls got a ridiculous amount of amusement out of the little paper finger puppets that came in the kids meals.

I love how they can be so entertained by something so simple.

Ok! I think that’s all I’ve got in the way of birthday pictures. Oh, wait…I have one more blurry one.

Phew. That was a lot of pictures of me for one post. I will now go back to hiding behind my camera. 😉

Joshua’s 365 post: Man vs. Food