The Life and Times of Bert and Kelli Millett

• you come home from the grocery store with saltine crackers, graham crackers, Ritz crackers, Nilla Waffers, cranberry juice, Sprite and Orange Cream Sherbet
• nothing sounds appetizing except, perhaps, the items mentioned above
• your dryer doubles as a dresser
• your dishwasher doubles as a cupboard
• you occasionally go to bed before your children
• you pay your four year-old a dime to watch her two year-old sister while you take a power nap on the couch
• it takes a week to eat a box of Samoa Girl Scout Cookies as opposed to the traditional two hours
• you see pregnant women everywhere
• you get choked up watching pairs ice-skating
• you get choked up reading the Friend magazine to your girls
• you get choked up watching a commerical about cancer research
• the last piece of carrot cake remains untouched until your husband gets home and eats it
• you don't remember the last time you cleaned your bathroom (yikes! should I admit this online?)
• you have dreams about finding a hidden basement with four extra bedrooms underneath your house
• you feel a sudden urgency to potty-train your two year-old

So our Labor Day plans this year? We are taking the holiday quite literally. I'm due September 3rd.

When my birthday rolls around in July we have a lovely tradition (that I insist upon) called Birthday Week. One way or another, we celebrate several days before and after the actual "birth" day. This year we instituted birthday week for Bert - partly by accident, partly by purpose.

The festivities began with Valentine's Day. I HATE all the candy that makes it's way into our house but I adore everything else. And I loved celebrating on Sunday. I had all day to be with my sweetheart and our three girly-dudes. We started with a pink breakfast. I just have to say that I love myself every time I make cinnamon rolls. Yum. We ate them for days. The girls loved the pink icing on them. Bert and I made Valentine's for the girls and we had some simple gifts for each other including a Culture Pass to the Desert Botanical Gardens. Sadly, Faith and I didn't get wind of "heart hair" until after V-day but I still had to post this picture of it that we took the following Wednesday. Once again, credit to the Chases for being our hair inspiration

President's Day we took advantage of our day off to use those passes for Desert Botanical Gardens. Team Neat hit the trail again! Bert is our family botanist and was fascinated by all the desert plants. I must admit that you can see an incredible variety in a very short amount of time. But after an hour and a half we were all done and ready to eat the desert plants! Bert found us a lovely picnic spot to enjoy our dinner and the sunset at the same time. Why do picnic meals always taste so good?

Tuesday and Wednesday we ate more cinnamon rolls and caught a dinner out with Marci and Eric. I think we've been to Texas Roadhouse once a month for three months now. Hmm. Maybe we'll branch out March. We all had a good laugh over their gift to Bert. Yes, is was the bust returning home....and she had a new, updated look. (See our Christmas post if you are confused about what the bust is.) Eric painted the green shirt maroon and then gave her matching botox-ed lips. What a beauty, what an heirloom! What on earth are we going to do to get it back to them?

Thursday was Bert's 32nd birthday. What a great guy- we sure love him around here. And to show our love I cooked like a maniac. We had A1 breakfast, then a delicious pork chop dinner and carrot cake that night to make sure we were completely stuffed. (I also love myself when I make carrot cake.) We had several visitors and Jane thoroughly enjoyed singing happy birthday all day long. The girls both wrote him emails during the day. He finished the last fork-ful of carrot cake this morning so I guess Birthday Week is officially over.