Today is my birthday so Brian brought me these beautiful flowers along with a letter he wrote telling how much he loves me. Reading that is more than I could ever ask for. He is a gem. I am truly, truly blessed to be married to such a man and to be the mama to our children.

I have lots of {happy} pictures this week. I received an early birthday present this weekend when my brother Rob, my sister-in-law Maria and my new nephew Max came to visit us. This is the first time I have been able to see Rob since he was really sick. A special thanks to all of you who were praying for him. I wanted you to see the answer to your prayers – he is much better now, thank God. Here he is with Matthew.





I was also happy to see the cousins meet for the first time. Matthew is a month older than Max but Max has a head start on size. They both are such cuties!! I love these photos of them together, and the one of my smiley boy as his usual cheerful self. Lastly, we were happy because my brother brought the So Calif sun with him. It was the first sunny day we have seen in a looong time!

This morning I had errands to run in Carmel. I dropped Andrew off at speech therapy and then headed downtown to return our library books and go to the post office. I couldn’t figure what was going on because the street was roped off, there were police everywhere and people were lined up along the sides of the road with cameras and video recorders. It was as if they were waiting for a parade. Then it dawned on me. This weekend is the Pebble Beach Concourse d’Elegance and many of the fancy cars are being displayed in downtown Carmel this afternoon. Unfortunately, I happened to be on the road just as the cars were driving into town. The cops had us stop so all the cars could pass. I didn’t have my camera with me so I snapped a few pics on my iphone. Unfortunately, it is really gloomy today so the colors are very muted but the whole situation still made me laugh.

Last week I showed you a picture of our deck torn apart. This week I am happy to say that it is complete. We landed out forgoing the traditional wood flooring because it did not do well and instead put in a TimberTech composite wood deck. It looks nice and is super sturdy. The kids looove it! They run and ride their tricycle and scooters up and down and I’m happy that it is done without chipping paint or getting splinters! A special thanks to the hardworking guy who did it for us. He did a great job!