4/28/80-4/28/08

i had the best birthday ever. EVER! thanks for all the well wishing. and david, i know you meant to call me. no hard feelings. you're only my 3rd favorite brother now. my golden birthday did not let me down! 28 is great! of late i have been apprehensive about celebrating birthdays with bigger and bigger numbers associated with them. i fear the older you get the less fun your birthday is. SO NOT TRUE!

here's the breakdown:
6:30am- i woke up and remembered that my sister, heather, had spent the night! a great way to start a day.
7:00am- enjoyed reading the entire comics page of the newspaper by myself with no interruptions while the kids were still sleeping. ate a GIGANTIC bowl of reese's puffs cereal.
8:30am- ran three point one miles with my sister by my side.
10:00am- went to the grocery store stinking like a teenage boy because i was still wearing my workout clothes. purchased items for my dream birthday cake.
11:00am- created dream birthday cake. heather did most of the baking. i did a fair amount of bowl licking.
12:00pm- removed the abominable stink from my body by showering.
1:30pm- was picked up by thomas for a fun lunch downtown on the plaza! thomas surprised me by taking the afternoon off.
2:00pm- consumed delightfully creamy gnocchi pasta at the classic cup. it was so rich and delicious that i would swear they had added newborn baby skin to the sauce.
3:00pm- shopped. purchased fantastical silk dress from banana republic courtesy of mimi susu's gift card. thomas amused himself by checking the ESPN website on his blackberry. how did i ever convince him to go shopping with me before the invention of the blackberry?
5:00pm- returned home from plaza escapade.
5:30pm- put finishing frosting touches on dream birthday cake.
7:00pm- enjoyed a wonderful birthday party with my adoring spouse, my well-behaved and clean children, my magnanimous and loving parents. much pizza was consumed. crystal light was imbibed out of champagne flutes. cake and ice cream were devoured. presents were opened and much fun was had by all!
10:00pm- did the dishes with a huge smile on my face
11:00pm- crawled into my bed with a huge smile plastered on my face and thought about my wonderful day. can't wait 'till next year. of course i think by then i will be back to wanting to go backward in age. i would like to try and be 27 next year.

the classic cup!
me displaying my banana republic dress bag. (did you know that i love banana republic? those of us in the "know" call it BR. now you know.)
my "28 is GREAT" cake. more frosting than you can imagine. and on a classy platter of a cookie sheet covered in tin foil.
what makes this my dream cake you ask??? the bottom layer was a gi-freaking-normous brownie. on top was yellow cake and gobs and gobs of frosting in between layers. perfecto.
the band that played at my party. i love live music.
i never know what to do when people are singing happy birthday to me. what's the polite and gracious thing to do? smile demurely and make eye contact with each guest? sing along softly? stare at my hands in my lap? i chose none of these. i waved my arms around like a lunatic and sang louder than everyone else in a higher octave than everyone else. i think that the best way to celebrate.
ps- that's not a gigantic diaper around my waist, though it does resemble one. it's my faithful apron. i never enter the kitchen without it. i thought that if i wore it around my waist only then it wouldn't be so obvious in pictures. hmmm, guess i was wrong!

about the post title:
oftentimes i have wondered when the best time of the year is to die. you don't want to die near christmas because you can't open your presents and you don't want to die right before your birthday because you want to get the most out of the current age you are. and doesn't it make sense to come full circle and die on your birthday? so i figured that coolest day for me to die would have been monday so that my headstone would have read:
4/28/80-4/28/08
how cool would that have been? now i have to wait until 4/28/28. or 04/28/40. that would be pretty neat too. or of course, the granddaddy of them all, 4/28/2080. is this morbid? just a little. but you gotta plan for these things.

let's talk about me

i can't remember the last time i left a hair salon completely happy. several years would be the closest estimate that i could give. i think it was that time in 2002 that natalie and i got our hair done at the real von curtis salon, not the school, in provo. so, it's been awhile. some of you may remember the infamous perm hair of 1993 and 2000(gasp, i know, i had a perm that recently. how many of you can claim that?). many of you recall me with black hair, or stripey gold hair, or stripey platinum hair. and LOTS of bad regrowth. plus lots of shades of brown hair and of late, gray hair. yikes! somehow, last week, the unimaginable happened. the stars aligned with the moon and i left the salon with a smile on my face and a spring in my step! i ventured out to a new salon called blondies and they accepted me, even though i am a brunettie. i would guess most of the stylists there are brunetties too.

anywhooo, this new cut isn't anything outrageous. i'm not JEM or anything.

JEM or not, i think it is great. i just sat down and told the stylist i wanted something youthful and non-mommyish and easy to do yet slightly dramatic. and as an added bonus if it could be a little bit like victoria beckham's hair when it was long, that would be fantastic. (victoria is my current crush. now if only katie holmes would go away so that we could be best friends...)
TA DA!
the day of:

those of you that have followed my hairstyles of late are probably remarking to yourselves, "heidi, that i just like that time you wanted your hair long with loose waves. only you used a hillary duff photo." i know, i just like that look. straight, flat hair isn't for me. the bigger the better!

my personal recreation of the style:

furthermore, judging from these photos, i like to wear aprons all the time.

thomas seems to like it too. but he has told me to stop staring at myself in the mirror and fluffing my hair all day. i say, i'll fluff all i want! it means i actually like it! would he rather have the usual grumpy, whiny, complaining depressed heidi? well, about my hair anyway? haircuts can't fix everything!

heidi's haircuttin' haven

doesn't it seem like the hair salon with the goofiest name is the hair salon that should be most avoided? too bad reagan doesn't have that option. there is no chez heidi salon in this bathroom. but thanks to fantastic enrichment night lesson, i do have the skills to do a VERY basic boys haircut. reagan had begun to resemble shaggy from scooby do and i was feeling like i needed to drive the mystery machine around town and pass out scooby snacks. so a haircut was in order. zoinks!

shaggy, the uncompliant client

the back view. luckily, reagan doesn't have normal hair, he has cat fur. thin, fuzzy and completely unmanageable.

the bribe. i told reagan he could eat as many cookies as he wanted if i could just cut his hair.

the big reveal: a full tummy, a bit itchy...

and pants-free, of course,

but happy.

caution to the wind

the weather was in the high 60s today and i could hardly contain my glee! the weatherman said to be on the lookout for thunderstorms and tornadoes, but we threw caution to the wind(literally) and played outside. the winds whipped around our faces and the clouds swirled up above, but we were fearless! actually, i was a little afraid of the swingset falling down while i was climbing on the monkey bars, but i certainly wasn't afraid of any ol' tornado.

uncle mark modeling the argyle socks with workout attire trend that is so hot right now.

since we are on the subject of tornadoes and all things midwestern, i will address something that has been on my mind. many of you think we live in kansas. we don't. we live in kansas city, missouri. not kansas. missouri. not kansas. spread the word. tell your friends. note mark's sweatshirt:
somewhere under the guitar is says missouri.

and we're still celebrating...

i went to hy-vee groceria today to pick up some needed items. i always swing by the bakery to see what free sample they were offering to sweet little boys riding in their mommy's cart. today it was sugar cookies. reagan did not want a cookie. he wanted cake. he very loudly refused the cookies and shouted for cake as i pushed the cart toward produce. can you believe it? a good little simpson boy refusing something chocked full of sugar? you think you know a kid...anywhooo, reagan's desire for cake is just getting louder as i push the cart away faster. then a sweet bakery employee tracks us down and gives us a free slice of cake. i am thanking her profusely and reagan demands an entire cake. a slice was not enough for him. apparently our next family home evening lesson will be entitled, "how to not look gift horse in the mouth."
we continue to bop around the grocery store and reagan slowly warms up to the cake. then he drops it on the floor. luckily it was in a plastic container. then i drop it on the floor. and then i smash into it with the cart and drag it under a wheel for a few feet. amazingly the plastic container is still intact. show me a biodegradable container that will take that much punishment!

the cake:
the happy boy in mis-matched sweats:
singing "happy birthday" for the gabillionth time to reagan.

the beck family band rides again

spring break 2008 was an extra special one for my family. my baby brother mark returned home from his mission on tuesday and the whole fam damily reunited for the occasion. if you are not interested in an onslaught of beck family pictures. stop reading now. i won't be offended. however, if you can hold on long enough, there are some funny pictures of people being silly at the bottom.

mark is one of those special people that left on his mission when he was 18 and returned home when he was 20. he turned 21 on wednesday and we celebrated. reagan thought we were celebrating for him again. reagan also thought the welcome home balloons were for him.

some week highlights:

david arrived at midnight thursday. frontier airlines lost his luggage and he was scrounging for clothes to wear from thomas and mark's closets the whole time. at one point david had to resort to wearing his old mission suit for the family picture. he was wearing two different belts on top of one another to keep his pants up and he couldn't take his jacket off because of the holes in his white missionary shirt. by the time david left on sunday night to go back to utah, his luggage still had not been located.

another highlight was the warmer weather. we were able to go downtown and enjoy the crown center fountains.



another time honored beck family tradition was the group nap that took place at my house on saturday:

as promised, your added bonus! i am purposefully posting all these silly pictures with the everyone looking slightly ridiculous. these cracked me up. i hope it makes you laugh too!




frighteningly funny heather

once again, the scarlett/scarlett o'hara similarities are uncanny. i didn't purchase scarlett's easter dress for her, it was a gift from my mother. the fact that scarlett o'hara wears a tiered ruffled dress in the opening scenes of gone with the wind is purely coincidental.

the sickest party ever

for me, motherhood has been a marathon with several mad dashes sprinkled throughout the race. i am constantly behind, trying to close the gap between me and the endless lists of tasks to be completed. a prime example has been reagan's 3rd birthday. i feel like we had been celebrating forever but never quite getting close to the finish. for about a month i have been coaxing reagan through trips to various stores with the promise that eventually his birthday would come and whatever pined for item would be his. the most highly desired gift? a toy trumpet that can be filled with water to achieve various pitches. perfect for bathtime. by the time the big day had arrived, we had already celebrated the week before with mimi and bubba at grandma and grandpa's house. cake was eaten, presents were opened, pictures were taken, football helmets were worn to church.




of course there needed to be day of festivities. silly me completely forgets to buy decorations until about 10pm saturday. i turn to my trusty artsy fartsy box and cut out letters for some signage. in my birthday haste i did purchase some balloons, but no wrapping paper. the solution? spread the toys around the kitchen christmas-morning style and hope reagan doesn't think anything is off.

i forgo display of clothing gifts and hang them in his closet, because what little boy wants new clothes anyway? the balloons turn out to be water balloons and are nearly impossible to blow up. a successful leader always delegates, so thomas got the job of blowing up as many tiny balloons as he can. the tiny orbs mock me as i string them up in the kitchen.



the finishing touch is mickey mouse shaped pancakes that reagan takes one look at and says, "ooohhh toodles! i want some cereal." reagan munches on reese's puffs while thomas and i enjoy the unauthorized disney pancakes.


did i mention the whole family has been sick since tuesday? so, reagan spent the bulk of the day in his jammies watching mickey mouse clubhouse and napping while thomas and i took turns with church attendance and feeling awful.

later that evening we go to my parents house for a dual reagan grandpa celebration since they share the same birthdate. somewhere in all this birthday chaos i created a 55 and 3 birthday cake. not the prettiest cake, rather ronald mcdonald-esque. but i enjoyed making it.


lucky for us, grandpa and grandma had been sick too. they didn't mind eating a cake prepared by a cough and cold sufferer. we all revel in our illness.

more presents are opened and the highly coveted trumpet is presented. cheers abound. also, reagan has an affinity for scotch tape, so one of the gifts was a tape dispenser. simple pleasures.




my ultimate goal for reagan's 3rd birthday was small and simple. so much for that. through all reagan's flu symptoms, he did seem to enjoy his special day. thankfully the next birthday isn't until june...