The Big 4-0

Nate turned 40 on Friday.  Mother Nature gave him a nasty cold for his birthday.  That wasn’t his favorite.  We had a really low-key birthday celebration.  Nate insists that he likes it that way.  We had Subway sandwiches for lunch (Nate let Abby pick since she didn’t have school on Friday).  The rest of the kids got out of school at 1:05.  We had just enough time for Nate to open his presents and blow out his candles before we had to head back to the school for parent teacher conferences.  He got a blu-ray player, a Nerf gun (so he can have Nerf battles with Ben…Ben insisted on this present), Hive, a scan tool for the van, pistachios, pineapple juice, and a homemade book from Abby.  I didn’t want to light 40 candles, so I figured we would just use some number candles.  We had a 4 candle but not a 0 candle, so I had to be creative.  I put 73 on his cake for the year he was born.  The kids thought it was pretty funny that it looked like he was 73 years old. 

Parent teacher conferences were great.  Some days I wish our girls were as angelic at home as they apparently are at school, but I guess I should just be happy that they are good somewhere.

 

As soon as we got home, I headed off to Time Out for Women.  I felt a little guilty about leaving on Nate’s birthday (even though he was the one who originally suggested it to my sisters), but I had a great time.  The speakers were amazing!  It was just what I needed.  I didn’t want to drive to Layton twice, so I stayed at Jody’s house on Friday night.  That’s why all of our birthday celebrating had to be done so early.  Nate and the kids had Papa Murphy’s pizza for dinner, played Hive, and watched Apollo 13.  Ben made up for his slacker mother by making Nate breakfast in bed on Saturday.  He made cheesy scrambled eggs with bacon* and salsa, and toast with the number 4 and a balloon painted on in jam.  I love that sweet kid.

I thought about making a list of 40 things I love about Nate, and then remembered that I already made a list of 36 things a few years ago.  They are all still true (I checked), so I decided to just add 4 more things to the list . . . some with photographic evidence.  Here goes:

37.  He teaches our kids how to ski.

38.  He has learned how to listen to the sound the boat makes when it is almost full of gas so he knows when to stop and we never waste gas by having it spill out when he is filling up.

39.  He keeps playing Words With Friends with me even when I beat him 9 times out of 10.  (He holds his own in Scrabble; I can just work the board better in WWF.)

40.  He has depression era philosophies about wastefulness . . . and makes really cool blanket forts.

I sure lucked out to score such a quality guy.  He is better than I deserve, but luckily he still hasn’t figured that out.

* Really it was shredded fajita chicken we had in the freezer.  Ben didn't know the difference and Nate didn't want to hurt his feelings so he didn’t say anything.