Birthday and Sundry!

On Tuesday Joe turned

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(30 exclamation marks)

Yep. 30. He so old.

I am ashamed to say that I didn't take any pictures of the things we did. Much of the day was pretty uneventful, so I'll use that as my excuse. He went to work in the morning, and as soon as he left I jumped up to work all day on his super duper present so that it would be a surprise. Want to see it? Want to??

Tah-dah! Okay, I know it doesn't look like much. This is one of those moments where I regret not having taken a before picture. But this is the interior of the "shanty," as we fondly call the garage/shed building in our back/side yard. And it was a devastating mess. The tools on the pegboard were in a giant, horrific pile on the workbench, mixed in with trash and spare wood and sawdust and other scraps. It was scary. So with the help of my lovely mother, I cleaned it all out, built a shelf for the workbench, installed the peg board and organized all the craziness into a delightful tool area. It took a loooong time but I think he likes it. I know I do. Such pride.
....sometimes, I just walk out there and gaze upon it.

Sigh. So beautiful.

When he came home from work my brother was here with those giant balloons. Together we walked him out to the shanty (which my brother had sneakily decorated with a GIGANTIC red bow moments before) and revealed the work area. Joe was duly impressed. Then the three of us left to dinner at Happy Sumo with his parents and mine (which was basically his birthday party, and which I documented not a whit) and the parents gave Joe their gifts. Mom's included some additions to my tool-y land present:

Joe loves pink.

Just kidding. It was the only color left. But...he also is okay with pink.

After dinner Spencer came back home with us to plaaayyy... THIS.

Which was Spencer's present to Joe. It's a Star Wars roll playing adventure! I probably shouldn't even show you this for fear of discovery. But there it is....WE ARE NERDS. Yes, even Joe. I'm sure this is a staggering revelation (ha...ha........) He loves Star Wars and we have already spent over 6 hours playing this game. We both love it. Good job, Spencer.

We spent the entire evening/night on his birth date playing that game until waaaayyy too late for a group of working folk, and that was that! We were going to have a celebration with friends but we might end up being too lazy (?? to have fun? Yeah...) I think he enjoyed himself that day and he is, of course, entirely unfazed by his unbelievable oldness.

In other more minor news, I have some updated pictures from around the house. Cause it's been SO LONG since the last ones. Mwahaha.

Here's my lovely office again. I guess I just like to show it off.

But I hid the cords under my desk (yay!) and we moved the ottoman from the living room in here (under the window) becauuuuuse....

New tables!

 My cousin Kate was selling her matching coffee and sofa tables that I have loved since I first saw them. I actually planned on staining/painting the last coffee table we had in here to mimic the style (though I ended up staining the top and painting the legs, rather than the other way around, because it was a lot easier). And I really liked our old table, but the color was slightly wrong, the table top was a bit small for our liking and it was sort of wiggly (though we could have fixed that. We just didn't.) So when she told me she was going to put hers up on KSL but was waiting to see if I wanted them first I was super excited. And I took them, obviously. And I love them.

We moved the rug out of there, which is a weird change. I didn't like it with the tables for some reason. I don't really like having just plain wood floors either, but it was bugging me so much to have the rug so I'll just have to deal with it...somehow. (dramatic voice)

The dogs approve. Or they don't care. I'm gonna go with the latter.

 The sofa table replaced the ottoman in front of the window. Sawyer's favorite sleepy spot is gone (although he still uses it in the office). The only sad part about this is that we no longer pull into the driveway and see his sickeningly adorable face resting on the windowsill, watching us.

It's getting to the point where we've changed things up in this room so much that I can't tell if we're making it better or worse. But I love the tables, and I love the floor, and everything else I also love. So I guess we're doing okay. :)

 And that's that in Gallowaylandia. Birthdays, shanties, nerd confessions and tables. I do so love our silly little life :)