Surprise!

This past weekend, Husband surprised me with a surprise 30th birthday party. Or tried to surprise me. I am very happy with all the effort he put into it and spending a wonderful day with some of my best friends. Thanks so much!

That being said, it wasn't a surprise but I played along...

Ingredients for a great surprise party (or any party):

• Invite your best friends
• Have everyone bring their favorite dish
• Beer
• Friends
• Beer
• No gifts required
• Have fun

How not to throw a surprise party:

• Ask/tell party recipient that she/he needs to wash the floors (serious - he should have known there that the gig was up)
  
• Have them prepare their own food while feigning ignorance of why you/they are making mad amounts of food for "later in the week"
• Start cleaning other areas of the house that are normally left alone
• Clean in general because it's not normally "your job"
• Tell significant other to stay out of your email/FB (because a) your planning something or b) your having an affair :P )
• Have me by my "favorite" beer to bring to an made up picnic with coworkers - which totally would not have been enough.
  
• Ignore dog crap in the yard (where people will end up) but requiring floors to be squeaky clean (where people will not be)....
  

And the NUMBER ONE THING NOT TO DO:

Tell the kids

Leading up to the party, I kept hearing about how it was going to be a special day but they couldn't tell me why. And also, I couldn't go in the basement (their rule - no one else's).

Despite me knowing, it was a great party and I enjoyed having a wonderful day with friends!

Farewell Booger....

We've spent alot of time this summer stream wading and as such, we've observed mud puppies, salamanders, newts, frogs, toads, tadpoles, fish and crayfish (along with an assortment of bugs). We even had a tank full of tadpoles to observe and then release. Imagine our surprise when we found out our tadpoles were in fact - tree frogs by catching them climbing out of the tank.

Closer view

It was also a possible explanation why we went from nine tadpoles to 2. Or so we thought....

So we had two lonely tree frogs named booger 1 and booger 2. I casually mentioned to Husband that we needed to let them go outside.

Later that afternoon, I heard alot of shrieking coming from the kitchen. Einey and Moe walked in and caught Toothless (aka Mr. Naughty Turtle Bits) eating booger. As I rushed to try to save him, I noticed it was just too late. Mr. Naughty Turtle Bits had in fact, caught his own dinner. The girls mourned the loss of their tree frogs and learned a lesson about the circle of life.

Good-bye frogs...