Happy birthday to you the dog got sick on your shoe

It wasn't my birthday.  My youngest son turned 18 on the 19th of January.  So that means it is official now.  I am old.  I've been looking at lots and lots of pictures of him (I always do this when one of my boys has a birthday) and I feel like I've had an army of kids.  They change so much at each stage of their lives and I always think I really miss when they were a baby or when they were 2 or 4.  They were both very special at different ages and I feel sad when the stage is over and that child is gone. There was always a new wonderful older child in their place that I enjoyed getting to know.  They both have such wonderful personalities.  Now that they are both grown I miss all of those children they used to be.  It makes me sad but now I have these two young men that I love and I am proud to call my sons.

The day before his birthday I went way overboard cleaning in the kitchen.  I'm doing the 52 weeks to an organized home challenge and I'm really loving it.  I *try* to just to the 15 minutes of decluttering every day but most of the time I just can't stop there.  I have been scrubbing up everything since running things through the dishwasher sometimes isn't enough.  I even scrub things I am donating since I still want them to look nice.  I found some old wallpaper at a thrift store several years back that I really loved because of the little leaves on it.  There was also some wallpaper boarder that had herbs on it.  I thought when I got into my new house I would use it but I never did.  We've been living here for 10 years now.  I have almost tossed it several times but I really liked it so I have decided to cut it up to line my cabinets and drawers.  I don't stick it down except with a piece of clear tape here and there. I even lined one of my lazy susan cabinet's shelves and that took some brain power.  I had to stick two sheets together and figure out how to make a huge circle.  I used a strip of ducktape folded onto itself and stuck an ink pen through a

hole on one end and measured the distance I needed and stuck a tack there.  I had my son hold the tack while I drew the circle around.  I stuck it in the cabinet and used my fingers to make creases along the area that needed to be cut out and then I used a spice jar lid to make the circle in the middle to cut out.  Anyway, it looks great.  I used that cabinet to organize my pots and pans.  I spent all day scrubbing those pots and pants so they were all shiny silver.  It really did take me all day since I had to take a bunch of breaks to sit down.  I finished in the middle of the night and I just love how it looks now.  I haven't taken a picture yet but it looks amazing.

I was afraid to go to sleep that night because I just knew I was going to be in pain when I woke up.  I had to though since it was Riley's birthday Monday.  I was in bed most of the day and when my husband got home from work with the ice cream cake he started yelling.  The dog had gotten sick and there were dribbles of diarrhea everywhere. I am sure she tried to get me to let her out and I just didn't wake up.  Poor

girl.  I told my husband to stop yelling at her.  She will be 14 next month so she is really old for a beagle and it isn't her fault that she is sick.  I was really cranky and probably scary looking since I just woke up so everyone backed up and listened lol.  Then I was going to lay back down but between the 3 guys no one wanted to call and order pizza.  Someone said "I ordered last time"  someone else said "I've never done it before and don't know what to say"  then they said "get mom to do it"  holy moly they are pathetic.  So I opened my laptop and showed them the website and then I still had to order it myself.

After the pizza got here we all had a great dinner and spent some time together.  I felt so bad that I let myself do too much so I was feeling so bad on his birthday.  Next time I'll have to think about that.

All this stuff on the stove is stuff that I took out of the cabinets to get ride of.
I found over 45 bread clips in all of my drawers.

Riley only got a couple of his presents since some didn't get here yet.  We ordered them too late.  Oh well, he'll live.  Since he is in his third year of Japanese I got him a Japanese robe for relaxing in during the evenings.  I also bought him a set of rice bowls and chop sticks.  I got him a couple anime related things and a game thing.  He is pretty happy with the things he got so far.

I sure love that kid.