My Birthday

My birthday was last Thursday. Since Mom's is just a few days after mine, we usually (like, for the past 23 years) have parties together. However, since things are a bit different this year, I really wanted to go ahead and have my party Wednesday evening, when Jacob was here. So that's what we did! I made both my meal (pizza) and my cake...we were both really busy getting everything ready to go for our birthday trip (making food for the guys, making sure their clothes were clean, etc) so it just worked out better for me to make my stuff while Mom was doing other stuff. I had fun with my cake...it's not every day you make your own cake, so I made it memorable. It's just a chocolate cake and I used some icing I had leftover from a while back when I made a cake. So, it's like a thrifty cake, too...haha!

Dave took the pictures of my party. Here are a few...

Opening my new ear wrap...

What is this???

Ooohhh. This. I really really wanted this set, but it was a bit embarrassing to open and explain, considering the company. ;) See? His face is red. :)

My grandparents gave me this...

I think Jacob wants to watch it. What do you think? ;)

That's about all from my birthday. I got a ton of stuff...3 ear wraps, a set of earrings, 2 knitting magazines, a knitting book, the Making Babies set, Pioneer Woman's new cookbook, the Farm Chicks cookbook, and a dessert cookbook. That was all just from my immediate family.

We left for Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg Thursday morning, but I'm going to put that in a separate post. It'll be long!

Sunday I went to Jacob's right after church and ate lunch with them. After lunch, they surprised me with another party! Jacob bought me a cheesecake I'd told him I loved, they put a candle in it, and sang to me. Super embarrassing! Mr. and Mrs. Ellis bought me a rose bush and the little girls made me homemade birthday cards. It was so sweet! They're making me feel very welcome in their family. Jacob got me all kinds of stuff...chocolates, a Cato gift card, a bottle of perfume, and a set with lotion and body spray in it. The perfume is special, because I've never really worn any and I'd wanted Jacob to pick out what he liked. I love it too, and I hardly ever love perfumes. Of course, everything he gave me is special because he picked it all out, and that's not something he has much practice at doing! :) He was talking about picking out the perfume, and he said "Do you know how many kinds there are?! I'd spray one, 'yuck!' then spray another 'yuck! I don't think so!" I'm glad he found one he likes. :) 

Sunday afternoon we all just sat around for a little while, and then Jacob took me down to see the river that's close to the house. We stopped in at our house so I could see what he's gotten done so far, and wow!!! He's taken the whole living room floor out already! Poor guy, he's so worried I'll be disappointed or discouraged with how it's looking right now. When I asked to stop and look at the house, he said "you don't really want to, do you?" Um..yeah! So he stopped and we got out and on the way to the door, he kept saying, "there's no floor you know...it's just dirt...it looks rough right now..." I'm so excited about the house and what he's doing with it, and I'm trying to convince him of that! Worry wort! I'm trying to figure out a time I can go out there and help him work on it...I think that sounds like so much fun! In my family, we've always done everything ourselves, and we've remodeled quite a bit, so it's something I'm used to being around! It's exciting!

Then we drove down to the river and walked around for a little bit. It's so pretty down there this time of year, with everything greening up. They were skipping rocks and laughed at my feeble attempts. I think I need some practice! Jacob said he was going to throw me in, but he didn't. ;)

On the way back to the house, he asked if I wanted to go mountain climbing. Mountain climbing? I said sure, so he stopped and said we'd climb Buzzard's Roost. It was really something...pretty tough to climb up, since it was so steep, but I had a lot of fun and the view from the top was incredible. I'll have to get him to take me again sometime, since I didn't take my camera! Jacob ended up getting really nervous on the climb though, because he thought I might fall. And if I did fall, I'd pretty much roll off the bluff...it was that steep. I guess it was pretty dangerous, and he kept asking if I was scared, but stuff like that doesn't scare me. I'm not afraid of heights and I enjoy climbing like we did. Seriously, I can't describe how steep it was...a lot of the time you had to crawl up on your hands and knees and grab roots in the ground or trees to pull yourself up. On the way back down, you pretty much slid from tree to tree. I had a blast though, and we got back without Jacob having a heart attack, which was a plus. It's amazing to me to be able to see clearly, in instances like this especially, how protective of me he's grown. I'm in no way complaining...I think it's a beautiful thing!!! In this modern, feministic world, I love seeing old time chivalry, where men and women's roles are allowed to grow into what they're naturally meant to be! Seeing Jacob take care of me, whether it's physically while climbing mountains, making sure I'm taken care of when he isn't able to be around, and fixing our house nice for us, or emotionally when he won't let me not tell him what's wrong if I'm upset about something, or whatever it's called when I mention something someone did or said to me, and he gets aggravated with them for not treating me nice...these things thrill me! On my end, I love the feeling of wanting to help him in any way I can! I love when he takes care of me, and there's certainly no better way to feel like a treasured, cherished woman, than to have your guy trying his best (which is pretty darn good!) to take good care of you!

Ok, I got mushy. Sorry. ;) It happens.

When we got done climbing and got back to the car, he did tell me I looked like a wooly-bully. Is that how you'd spell that, I wonder? My hair was falling down something terrible (I didn't bother fixing it any other way than the fancy bun thing I'd done for church, since I didn't know we'd be mountain climbing!) and I did look pretty rough. He was just teasing me...he's awful with the teasing! I read somewhere a long time ago that if a guy teased you, it meant he liked you, so I guess I'll be ok with all the teasing. ;) There's a lot of playful banter that goes on when we're together, I'll tell you that much!

That'll wrap up my birthday post, I believe. Life today is back to normal...I worked in the strawberries again today. Dad asked me Thursday morning if I felt more achey when I woke up, seeing as how I'm getting to be old now. I said, yeah, my back hurt...but that was from sleeping on my stomach on my swayed mattress and working in the strawberries!

Gatlinburg, roller coasters, and more coming soon!