A time for firsts...

You would think that at age 40 all the excitement of "firsts" are behind you, but I've come to realize that they just don't end. Thank goodness that lately they have been great firsts like my first son leaving on his mission. Here are some pictures of him on the day he opened his mission call. He received his letter on a Thursday, but couldn't open it until Saturday because his brothers were at a scout camp outing. Well I invited my family and some ward friends to come be a part of the reading of the mission call. I asked everyone to be there at about 1:oo pm, his brothers didn't get home until almost 4 pm. Needless to say there were a lot of people ready to leave. It was such a crazy day because my sisters had a big work party that they were hosting at my sister Adriana's house and they wanted the whole family there, my sister-in-law Amy had a big YW activity, and all my friends all had stuff to do as well so I was very anxious to get this done and have people leave for their activities.


So we played a couple of games to see if anyone could guess where Josh was going to be called to and we had a map so people could put a pin where they served their mission.

Everyone was waiting and anxious to find out where he was going and to leave to their activities.

My younger boys Ammon, Eric and Angela were so excited that they made a balloon drop from a garbage bag and a small bag of balloons they found in the closet. It was a great day!!

Here's a video of when he read his calling. Enjoy!

So when the festivities were over, I have never seen people leave to fast. Everyone cleared out like a stink bomb went off. Well let me the first to say....LIARS, YOU'RE ALL LIARS!!!!

You guys lied so good and for so long!!

My sweet, but very sneaky hubby and my over-achieving, but adorable sister-in-law had been planning a surprise birthday party for ME :) for a very long time. And I have to say that I was very surprised. I had no clue, especially having been so busy with Josh's mission stuff. And I wasn't only surprised at the party, but who was there and how SPECTACULAR Amy and my sisters, and sisters-in-law made everything look. Women after my own heart. It was a full out sit-down dinner, with floral centerpieces, chargers and place-card for everyone, material hanging from the top of my sister's balcony and Chinese lanterns with jewels dangling from them, and a professionally made cake by April from Designer cakes by April with these awesome fancy jewels cascading from the top.

Shelly Flores from Flowers Unique made these beautiful centerpieces

The cake was FANTASTIC! and tasted soooo good as well.

Amy spared no detail it was so wonderful and so fun to have all my family and friends there celebrating this special occasion with me. It made turning 40, not so horrible. My sister-in-law Dyna put together an awesome video of pictures of me and my family growing up, my kids on video tape saying they love me (I have proof now), and my parents and their sweet memories of me when I was born and a small child. My brothers all roasted me and had a few nice things to say as well. And I want to thank everyone that had anything to do with making such a neat day for me. I almost didn't show up because I was so tired from Josh's thing that I wanted to skip out on the work party the Gary and Chad were supposedly doing for their new company. The thing that surprised me the most was how calm and collected everyone was during all of this craziness. I felt bad and repented for having such a bad attitude about going to my sister's house. All my crazy friends were even there. It was such a great surprise. My boys and all the older nephews where dressed up like waiters and waited on everyone, served our meal and helped clean up after is was all done. We had a blast! Thank you, thank you , thank you, for caring so much about me.