A Week of Party!

What a week!

It was full and it was fun!

Wednesday morning, it rained and it poured and the old man snored. Well, maybe not that last part, but it could have happened! I was sleeping when the rain started so who knows about the snoring part.  :) 

Anyway, lots of rain! Desert living is not designed for drainage, and lots of rain equals lots of water that doesn't have anywhere to go.  This translates to flooding.  Lots of flooding. Water running down windows in my house, and a garden that looked like a pond. Schools closed, kids played, people in cars drove into deep water ending up stranded, people had fun with the rain and jumped in little boats and paddled their way around.  Good times!

 It was the big guys official birthday, so I was baking and cooking all day, preparing for a delicious birthday dinner of homemade Mexican food.  Be. Still. My. Heart.   Chicken chilaquiles verde, spanish rice, and beans.  It was so good. 

The birthday cake though!  Oh my goodness, I would like another one of those delightful pieces of cake. 

Pumpkin Praline Torte = Heaven, in my bellah.  :P

A couple little turkeys I know made their daddy a homemade gift for his birthday.  Those same turkeys decorated the outside of the house that morning with dry erase markers.  That was fun to clean, said no mom, ever!  LOL

I baked and cooked again all day the next day for our Thanksgiving dinner contributions.  We had a great evening with wonderful food, and great friends.  It was a successful first Thanksgiving away from home. There was a great turkey famine this year in these parts, but by some stroke of luck, we had a nice turkey, thanks to our friends.

Pretty, huh? It was yummy.  I didn't roast it this year, but the person that did, roasted it perfectly.  So good!

After a fun night of food and spending time with friends, we ventured home to prepare for our next adventure of camping in the desert.

 We camped on the beach. The kids played, searched for shells for hours, and had the best time.

 Someone would not look at the camera to get a family picture.  She wanted more shells. 

 Some of the lovely ladies we camped with. There were many more not in the picture, but the two little ones steal the show with this shot.  :)

Still trying to get her to look up, and then there is the cutie with that hat...No idea what he is doing, but he's pretty cute sitting up there. 

This is what she wanted to do, not take a picture.  So funny. 

She came home with hundreds of shells, scraped up feet from walking on the rocky area of the beach and last but not least, very worn out.  That's how we know she had fun.  :)

The little guy dug in the sand, and played for hours, just digging away.  I think our teenage daughter found some of the coolest finds of the weekend, including several live starfish and an anchor of some sort.  She spent about as much time as the little one did searching in the water for whatever she could find. In this way, these two lovely ladies of mine are very similar.  It was fun to watch them both. 

We watched the sun set, and the moon come up over the horizon, and spent time with some really amazing people.  It was fun, and it was good.  Thank you, Katie for bringing your camera to take some of the amazing pictures I've shared in this post! Amazing!

God has been so good to us, here in this desert.