Greg's Birthday!!!!!

I am really late on this post....my apologies to the birthday boy.

March 20th was Greg's birthday! The Friday night of his birthday weekend, we had a babysitter and decided to hit the town! We didn't have a plan, just that we were going to do whatever HE wanted to do!

We regularly drive by this place called, Saint Rocke. I call it a place because we never really knew if it was a restaurant, bar, music venue, etc. It's nothing special on the outside, just a brick building with a marque out front listing bands, none of which we've ever heard of. Their website looked cool so we thought we would stop in and check it out.

In the words of Aunt Julianna, OMG! The place was awesome - dark wood, leather chairs/couches, soft lighting, very cool atmosphere, etc. We immediately fell in love with the place! We had a great time just chatting and being, as we call it, Greg and Bonney!

We decided to take it easy and just relax on Saturday. Well, I say relax but we did a lot of cooking. Since we've moved to California, we've been in the kitchen a lot more, which has been fun! I decided to make a cheesecake for Greg's birthday. We received the Southern Living Christmas Cookbook and not a single recipe has let us down yet!

Sunday, was the big day....the actual Birthday! I made stuffed french toast for breakfast. I must say, it was amazing!! The weather was not in our favor on Sunday. It was pouring rain and the wind was unreal - I swear the palm trees were going to snap in half. We laugh, because last year it snowed on his birthday. So, next year the weather has to be in his favor...we're running out of forecast options!

Greg and I always tell each other not to go overboard on birthday gifts (and Christmas for that matter). So I didn't.  :)

He's been watching The Office quite a bit, lately. With that being said, I HAD to get him this:

That's right, a Dwight bobblehead!!

Greg loves Dwight. And when I say love, he laughs every time Dwight speaks! I have to agree with him though, Dwight is hilarious.

Overall, I would say the birthday weekend was a success! Happy Birthday Boss, I love you!

Farmer Carson

Greg saw these pajamas and had to buy them....in honor of Granny and Gramps (my mom and step-dad, Chet). Too cute!

I can see!

On March 10th I had Lasik! Everything went well and I can see just as well as I could with contacts.

Keep in mind, I've worn glasses (or contacts) since I was 8 years old, so now not needing glasses or contacts is very freeing! A few times I've gotten in bed, all cozy, and then I think dang...I need to take out my contacts. Wait, no I don't!!!! What a great feeling!

For those of you that have never needed assistance with your vision (my husband) you have no idea what an amazing feeling this is! No longer the burden of glasses! When wearing glasses you can't wear regular sunglasses and if you decide to spend the money on a pair of prescription sunglasses, you have to keep changing glasses when you come in and out, you can't lay on your side to watch a movie because they get cock-eyed, one little smudge can cause some major distractions and don't get me started on water activities...these are just to name a few. Contacts - now that's a whole different story: dry eyes, ripped contacts, remembering to bring along your contact solution on overnights, etc. All bad news.

So, after 26 years of dealing with all of these annoyances, I can see - unassisted!

The surgery wasn't that bad. They put in so many drops, my eyes were completely numb - I couldn't feel a thing. The procedure took less than 10 minutes. I won't lie, my heart was pounding the entire time. I just kept telling myself - don't take your eye off of that green dot and...I can do this, I can do this. (we have it on DVD just in case anyone wants to watch it...it is pretty cool)

Probably the best part about the surgery, well besides being able to see, was the valium! It kicked in on the drive home (Greg was driving so don't worry, I wasn't driving around LA all drugged up! haha). I slept like a baby that afternoon, woke up for two hours and crashed for the night. Oh, and I had to wear these very stylish goggles....I still have them in anyone would like to borrow them sometime! (I especially like my drugged up smile).

I know these pants fit

As I was getting Carson dressed the other day, I could not get his pants pulled up all the way. I was holding him only by the waist of his pants and shaking him into them...I knew they fit, he just wore them the week before. Once I stopped and looked down, I discovered the problem.....

LEGOLAND!

I've been meaning to post about our trip to LEGOLAND for the past two weeks but tonight seems to be the first night I've had time to sit down for longer than 5 minutes.

Trey and Wyatt come to visit us the last weekend of February. I took off work that Friday and we all headed to LEGOLAND. It's about 1.5 hours south of us, just north of San Diego. We told Wyatt we were going to the beach...we wanted it to be a big surprise! The drive wasn't too bad but he was definitely ready to be "at the beach"! As we pulled into the park, we drove by the water park section first. He looked out the window and caught a glimpse of a lego water slide. He said, "Was that legos? I think that was legos. It looked like legos. Where are we? Are we at legoland?" As you can see there were a ton of questions! It was so funny! Once we pulled into the park, he said, "I knew it, I knew we were at LEGOLAND!"

It was a little chilly that morning, but it turned out to be a beautiful day! I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was so much fun! We all rode a ton of rides, ate extremely overpriced food and had a lot of laughs!! Carson even enjoyed himself. There was so much going on to keep his attention! He finally pooped out for about an hour nap but afterwards, he was ready to go again!

Here are some pictures:

Now for the roller coaster pictures. Yes, Wyatt rode two roller coasters and loved it!

I'm not sure who's having more fun....me or Wyatt!

This was such a fun ride, you ride through a building and shoot targets. As you can see, Greg and Trey had a great time w/ this one!

Only one word comes to mind when looking at this picture. Idiots! And, I'm only talking about Greg and Trey! They were posing as they shot down the big drop on the roller coaster. Poor Wyatt looks like death, but he took it like a man. Greg's hair looks like it's flowing behind him, and well Trey, it looks like he needs to make a trip to the restroom!

We had such a great time the entire weekend. We had a cookout one night and made lemonade on Saturday afternoon with lemons from the lemon tree in our backyard! Here are some pics!

The rain will not stop the Hodges boys from cooking out!

Wyatt had so much fun picking lemons! He helped me cut and squeeze the lemons for awhile, but it didn't take too long before Aunt Bonney was juicing the lemons on her own. :)  Wyatt was not a big fan of homemade lemonade...it's too sour! I told him because it's not pumped full of sugar like the kind he gets from the store. He just giggled! :)

There are far too many funny stories to share about the weekend. We are so happy they were able to make the trip and happy that Trey actually survived the plane ride! :)  We love you guys, thanks for coming out to see us! It means to world to us!