Spring Break, St. Patrick's Day and Number 34

 Hello world- it's been over a month since I posted but not much has been going on over here. The weather has finally turned a corner and we went from living in an icy snow globe to living in a warm spring land! I love Spring in any part of the country but especially Oklahoma.  There is a reason why we are nicknamed Green Country. When Spring hits here, our world goes from ugly brown to SO lush and green and gorgeous within a matter of days it seems.  It gets a little humid and it truly feels a little tropical with the warm air, green trees and huge flowers everywhere you look. It's sandwiched between our cold Winters and our way-too-hot Summer, so it's just the best. 

Anyway, our Spring Break always coincides with our Louisiana family's Spring Break as well, so we decided we should go see our cousins.  We had 2 babies to meet (Uncle Matthew and Aunt Christa's baby, Elle {born in October} and Uncle Bobby and Aunt Whitney's baby, Bo, {Robert but Bo for short, born November 2019 but then flu season hit and then Covid happened so even though he's over a year old we hadn't met him yet!}). Whitney's oldest son is super involved in baseball and they travel a lot for his tournaments so she was only going to be home for 2 days of Spring Break and we decided we'd take a quick weekend trip over there to see everyone.  We stayed in Shreveport (which is only 5 hours away) and everyone hung out at Whitney's for a day.  Bo is the cutest little dude.  So sweet well-behaved and such a ham. He was so fun to play with and he's just the cutest little boy. And then Elle.  Oh my goodness. I fell in LOVE with her. She is 4 months old and SUCH a delight. She was happy the entire day.  Just smiling all day at all of us. She is a doll. My heart just melted into her tiny little petite hands. I held her as much as I could and just loved her more than I knew I would. I miss her already! I wish they didn't live 7 1/2 hours away.  She lives in West Monroe, not Shreveport, so it's much further of a drive. Anyway, it was so fun to have all of the Gilley cousins together. They play together so well and all of them are just so darling!  It was a beautiful day!

A few days later we celebrated St. Patrick's Day.  We had the traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner and Lucky charms for breakfast.  The kids made a really good trap but the Leprechaun stole one of our knives and cut a hole in the box to get himself out! We have no clue how he managed but he did! We figured out that he came in through the front door, crossed our entire family room and kitchen, then escaped out the back door. He left green footprints the whole way!

And then I turned 34. This is the first year I feel kind of old. I think because my skin is showing major signs of aging now and it all kind of happened so fast. "Middle Age" is just around the corner and now that my kids are growing up I just don't feel young anymore. But it's Ok.  It's life! The kids went back to school on my birthday so Shawn made me a delicious breakfast of eggs Benedict after they left.  I read a little bit, I relaxed a LOT, and was basically waited on hand and foot for a whole day. Shawn always tells me not to lift a finger on my birthdays and I think that's the best gift he could give me.  Crab is second. I had my annual crab dinner and it was good as ever. I love that man. Plus, check out his card that he gave me this year. I laughed until my abs hurt. It was a perfect day!

Oh yeah. A couple of other things.... I went BLONDE! The warm weather had me feeling like Blonde was a good idea! Also, Piper had to go to the eye doctor to get her "wandering eye" looked at.  It's so mild that it's not very noticeable, but we still wanted to get it looked at again since she hasn't had it checked on since she was 3.  We are still in the clear, however, her eyes are starting to change and the doctor thinks she will need glasses by 5th grade, if not sooner.  And lastly, we made mini-s'mores! It was so cute and the kids had so much fun.

P.S. One more thing.... I got the Covid "Vaccine."  Maybe it's the right thing to do, maybe it isn't. But I'll do almost anything for my kids.  And if doing this means we are one step closer to giving them their childhood back AND ditching the dang masks, I'll do it. Shawn is very much against this shot so this was a big disagreement between us. One of those "Agree to Disagree" moments in our marriage! I see his side, I really do. I went back and forth with this choice a LOT before I made my final decision and that is that! Now off I go to the dentist to get an old cavity re-filled before I run some errands! One good thing about masks is that no one will be able to see my lop-sided face after my mouth gets put to sleep, haha!