Birthdays...and...Reading??

Birthday week is finally over. Exciting as it is, it is quite tiring to have 2 birthdays within 3 days of each other! Austin turned 5 and Ashlyn turned 4. I try really hard to make each day special for them. We had a really fun week even though all 6 of us had colds and weren't really feeling all that great. Luckily, we all had new toys to play with! We had a big party for the kids on Sunday last week which I will post some pics of when I get the computer running upstairs (as usual). We went out to lunch with a bunch of friends on Monday for Austin's "real" b-day and Ashlyn had a couple girlfriends over on Thursday on her "real" b-day. Such a fun week. Austin refused to have a b-day cake, all he wanted was root beer floats - so that's what we did!! We even stuck the candles in the ice cream. Ashlyn insisted on a Barbie cake - and thanks to my cake-baking sister, she got one! And it was amazing. After b-day craziness came to an end, I headed out for the weekend to do some scrapbooking. Shawn went to the farm with all the kids and I went with a couple friends to do some scrappin'. I have not scrapped in SO long so it was a real treat. I didn't accomplish much, but I did get a whole weekend with no kids (which was much needed after a week of colds and asthma issues), and I got to relax with my girlfriends. I got 7 pages done and also started a photo album for the kids - for some reason they love to look at pics of themselves...wonder if they will ever outgrow that. Anyway, it was a great weekend and I have a great husband to give me a whole weekend off and great in-laws to let him hang at the farm for a few days!
Now, onto the reading....Austin has started to read words! How cool is that??? It's definitely one of the "proud parent" moments. Shawn was showing him how to sound out words and he was totally getting it! Then today after we got home from school he wanted to practice words again - so fun!! I guess Shawn and I will have to find a new "code talk" since we won't be able to spell things like we used to.
That's all I got for now -
Hope you are having the time of your life!
ST