Yesterday Bill and I celebrated nine years of marriage. "Mawwiage...is what bwings us....togevva....tooday" (That was from The Princess Bride, in case you were wondering). So what does one do when celebrating an anniversary sans spouse? Well, if she has wonderful friends like I do, she is taken out to dinner without her children and given a little adult time. Our great friends, Amy and Jerry (you know, the future inlaws) took me to Buca di Beppo's for dinner last night. We got way too much food and way too much dessert, but that's what going out is all about, right? Our waitress was a little on the annoying side. She was one of those people who thought her sarcasm was funny, but really, not so much! We strolled around the Carlsbad Forum which is a new hoity toity place out here. I came across the website today and the *average* annual income for those who live within a certain distance of the forum is a little over $100,000. HA! So not able to comprehend that one. Regardless, we had fun strolling the shops and being able to go into stores without directing the children to keep their hands to themselves and having to use bribery to get them to listen. It was just us. Doing what we wanted to do, going to the places we wanted to go. Niiiiiice. I had a whole four hours away from my children and sadly, it was great.

The kids all had a great time together. They watched movies, drank gallons of juice and got along swimmingly. Trey is such a ladies man. By the time we got home, it was well past the kiddos bedtime so off they went and then my groom called. We talked about nothing and everything for a whole thirty minutes before the phone card ran dry. A 300 minute phone card in the States is a whopping half hour between Iraq and here. Crazy. He sent me some beautiful flowers to commemorate our special day. He proposed under the stars in August of 95 and my beautiful white bouquet is here to remind me of that night.

Do ya see it? White, stars, see? Thanks, Love.

To bring me back to reality with the force of whiplash, my children have been crying, cranky, whiny and snotty all morning. It took me from 8:30am to 10:30am to get Leah to take a nap. Every time she'd finally fall asleep Trey would somehow get the signal to make all kinds of noise and wake her from dreamland and causing my blood pressure to rise. We've already had one episode of "go to your room!" and death threats and we have an hour before lunch. I'm so handing these kids over to their dad when he comes home. He's a combat vetx2. I'm sure he can handle them while I go somewhere quiet for a couple of hours.