Surprise doesn't say enough!

Yesterday as a family we deep cleaned our entire house because we were going to have a date night with our friends and play games at our house. When we finished at 3 with the cleaning we hurried off to do some errands in Orem. We were about 15 minutes from home when my friend Tami Hansen called me and asked if we would stop by her house before we went home because our daughters had an altercation and we needed to talk it out. She knew that we were in a hurry to get home so I figured that it must have been serious and we needed to go help the girls work things out. I had so many things run through my mind as to what the girls possibly had fought about. I knew that Raven's day had started off bad and she has been having problems with a girl at school, so I was thinking that it might have something to do with that or just be hormones for two preteen girls. I walked up to the door while Steve got the boys out of the car. The door opened with a bunch of red clothed people yelling surprise. I was indeed surprised. I had no clue whatsoever that there was a party waiting for me. Steve with the help of my friends had arranged a surprise birthday party for me. He had teased a while back about having a funeral for me when I turned 40. Being the smart mouth that I am, I told him that I wanted a red party. I wanted red food, red drinks, red decorations and I even wanted my friends to wear red. The closer that my birthday got, the more sure I was that it wasn't going to happen. Steve asked me just last week what I wanted to do to celebrate. I told him that I wanted a party like I had already told him and that he could talk to my friends about it. I really thought that he was going to do nothing and I was going to put him in the dog house. After all I was only going to turn 40 once. The party was even better than I had imagined.

These 2 lovely young ladies that I thought had been in a huge fight made the poster below.

This poster made by Raven and Mikah was by the front door when I walked in. Steve said that it was my funeral poster.

The lovely red decorations.

More red decorations and friends dressed in red. Gotta love it!

Notice that they took sympathy on me by only putting on one big candle.

The lovely candle that was on my birthday cake. I had a lot of fun, felt very loved and couldn't have been more surprised! Thanks to everyone for helping and coming. Thanks to all those who have extended birthday wishes. It has been great, but don't forget I really don't turn 40 until Tuesday!

Our van has.....

Our van that we have driven for 4 years decided to commit suicide on Sunday. Without any warning it decided to bleed out spontaneously through the transmission. In an effort to keep us from resurrecting it, the van managed to place the leak in a position that would require much work and money to fix. Our friend took a look at it and declared it dead. It has 208K miles on it and has served us well, but with having to replace the transmission, the radiator and the rear suspension to make it live for maybe just one more year we have decided that would be about 3 to 4 thousand dollars that would be better spent on a newer vehicle. It is an inconvenient time for us and sad to say good bye to the Grape Ape, but now we get to find something newer with less miles. We are just keeping our fingers crossed and knees bent that we get a good tax refund so that we can pay cash for it. I really don't want to have to take out a loan in today's economy. So wish us happy hunting and if you know of any really good deals, then let us know. I keep telling Steve that what I really want is a.....

After all, it would make a great 4oth birthday present, don't you think?