April in Review

I just realized how behind I have gotten again in posting, and how much I had to catch up on, so the following is just going to be a series of posts to catch you up on what we've been doing in the month of April - it's been pretty busy, but a lot of fun too. I tried to write these in the order they happened so you can just scroll down from top to bottom instead of trying to read up this time. Enjoy catching up...

An Impactful Weekend

On the 1st weekend of April, we went out of town for a huge conference with some amazing guest speakers. We got a ton of information to help us grow our business, and got to hear from and get really close to some of the most sought after speakers in the world right now. Have you ever seen or heard of the movie, "The Pursuit of Happyness"? Well, that movie is about a guy named Chris Gardner (who is portrayed in the movie by Will Smith), and his struggle from being literally homeless to a millionaire or billionaire now. It's a very touching movie, but it makes it even more real when you can actually see and hear him in person. Here's the best picture I could get of him. On top of that amzing speaker, we also had one of the best leadership speakers and writers come and talk to as well - John Maxwell! He started out by saying that, "Yeah, the other day when I was speaking to the president of such and such country, and the top executives of IBM..." and I was thinking, "and now here he is talking to ME!" It was very cool to hear from him. I tried to get a good picture, but this is the best I got. You can google him if you want to find a better one.

Anyway, it was an awesome weekend and very impactful in many ways.

"Take Me Out To The Ball Game..."

While David's dad was visiting us for the weekend of David's birthday, we decided to spend Saturday evening at baseball field. We ate traditional, bad for you ball park food, and enjoyed the game even though our home team lost. But that was made up for with the fireworks at the end! They really were amazing - even better than the grand finale on the 4th of July. They just had a constant stream with no breaks for about 5 minutes! It was a fun evening.

Surprise!! - David's 30!!

April 13th, 30 years ago a little baby boy named David was born, and April 13th 2008 we all celebrated that day with a suprise birthday party for him! Now just so you know, David is a very perceptive person, and he was very suspicious of the surprise the closer his birthday came. I will tell you, however, that I did a really great job of not letting the cat out of the bag so to speak. But with the nature of our busy lives and our business, it wasn't too hard to suspect something. I had arranged for his dad to come up and spend the weekend with us, and I had Marty book the clubhouse theater at his place so that he and David could watch the Masters (golf tournament) on the big screen. I was wondering how we were going to pull this off without him knowing, so we came up with an alternate plan. Since he had an idea that when he got to the clubhouse, there would be a bunch of people there to "surprise" him, we all hid outside the clubhouse by the pool instead. So when he walked in, there was no one and no decorations or anything in the theater.

Then we had one of his friends get him outside the front door to give him something for a few minutes while we all came in the back door with balloons and decorations. We brought out all the food and put up all the decorations in 2 minutes, so when he walked back in we all yelled, "SURPRISE!!!" And he was actually surprised! He just kept saying, "I was just in here, and there was no one here, and now all this!?!" It was really a great way to surprise him.

Rockin' out to MAE

In the middle of the week last week, David and I decided to go see the last show of this tour of one of our favorite bands, MAE. They played at a small club downtown, so we spent the evening rockin' out to some other bands that opened for them. Then when MAE took the stage, they really stole the show - they were awesome! See for yourself...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Int6b00tp5g This opening was filmed at the show we were at, and the camera was literally right behind us, so what you see is exactly what we saw. We got some really cool tee shirts, and had a great time. I actually know the drummer in the band (we went to church together a long time ago and I hadn't seen him since - until I discovered he was the drummer in this band! - he's the one on the right in the picture above) So after the show, we went up to the stage to talk to him and see if he even remembered me. I was very surprised that he did! And he was super nice. Obviously we didn't have much time to catch up right then, but he did give us access to a special after show acoustic concert they were doing up on the roof. So we got to sit a couple of feet from them with only about 20 other people on top of the roof in the middle of the city with them taking requests and playing acoustic versions of their songs for about another hour. It was really cool.

A Golfing Goodbye

Since our good friend, Bill, is moving far away in 2 weeks so he can be close to his girl, the guys decided they would all get together and bid him farewell with a game of golf. Now, as you know, David is a really good golfer, and a few of the other guys are good (some better than others) but a couple of the guys had never played before and so haven't had a chance to become good yet. So they played 4 on 4, with the 2 really good golfers paired with the 1st time golfers, and the other 4 was a team of average golfers. They played captain's choice (which, if you are like me and had no idea what that means, it is just everyone hits their ball, but then they score from the best ball of each hit) I'm sure when David reads this he is going to think that's a very elementary way to describe it, but I am not the golf pro so that will have to do. Anyway, some of the 1st time golfers shots were actually the best ball on a couple of holes, so that combined with the sheer skill and talent of my amazing golfing husband won them the match...they then went to B-Dub's (Buffalo Wild Wings) to celebrate with the losing team buying the winning team lunch. They all had a great time and David even took some really good pictures. Here are a few of the best ones. It was a good way to say goodbye to Bill. WE WILL MISS YOU, BILL!

Golden Birthday Celebrations

March 28th was my golden birthday, meaning I turned 28 on the 28th. My birthday celebrations started when we got back from the beach last weekend. David took me out to dinner and gave me my 1st birthday gift early (an iPod Shuffle in red) since he was going to be out of town on my birthday weekend. He left on Thursday afternoon, and didn't get back until 10:30 Saturday night. So at midnight on Thursday, I called him and opened my card with him on the phone. He is so sweet and creative. Becuase inside the card was the 1st clue of 10 that took me on a scavenger hunt around the house to end up at a little gold box tucked away inside a shoe. Inside the box was this little sailboat charm that I had been eyeing since Thanksgiving! It was just what I needed to commemorate our sailing trip to Charleston in October of 2006. I really wasn't expecting anything else from him, since he had gotten me so many of the beautiful decorative accents for the house (that you can see a few posts below) plus the really cool iPod) But he surprised me again and surpassed my expectations. What a wonderful hubby!!

Then on my birthday evening, my best friend since I was 12, Rachel, invited me over to her house to have dinner with her and her family. Here she is with her youngest, Emma...isn't she cute!?! And her son, Collin, was also VERY cute. He was so excited that I was coming over and told me that he had made me a card and they made a cake too! When I arrived, there was a whole corner of the table dedicated to my birthday! I felt so special. Anyway, we had a delicious dinner, and great time visiting...Thanks, Rachel! You really are a great friend! Rachel got me a cookbook for my birthday since I am trying to be more domesticated and cook more meals at home. :)

Then she showed me some really cool stuff on the computer that I can incorporate into my blog posts. So you'll see some of that stuff coming soon. Oh yeah, and also she showed me how to change the template. Like it? David and I really do...this is more us I think. Well after dinner and messing on the computer, we had dessert and watched a movie...I didn't leave til after 12! But I did have a really great time.

The next day I celebrated with my parents at brunch. As I mentioned earlier, they had given me our comforter set as an early birthday present, so this picture is what my brother gave me (even though he couldn't be there either) to go in the bedroom and match the comforter. Also the really cute turquoise bag on the table was part of my birthday gift from David's mom.

That evening, another good friend, Amanda, and I went out to a nice dinner to celebrate some more. She got me a cute little necklace from a boutique called Girl Stuff. We had a great time dining together, and the restaurant even brought out a large piece of chocolate cake since they heard it was my birthday. Then at 10:30 I went to airport to pick my hubby up and we spent the rest of the evening curled up on the couch watching a movie....What a great Golden Birthday!