Beth’s mom had a birthday party this weekend. We went up Friday (I took the afternoon off), intending to stay overnight at Pam and Marve’s house. We got there in the mid afternoon, and went right to the nursing home. Ted had Mom G out, but was back shortly, and the entire family went out to eat at a Chinese/Mongolian buffet. The party (just family) was at her nursing home. I think Beth was just too depressed by the place to want to stay overnight, especially not wanting to have to get the kids to bed in a strange place, and besides, Pam was a little bit sick, so we excused ourselves after the party and headed home. On the way home it became apparent to me by the noise coming from the front end of the van that we needed new tires. Saturday we bought 4 new ones.

Our friend Scott’s donkey finally had her baby. Everyone has been waiting for that literally since a year ago. They knew the donkey was pregnant when they got her but they didn;t know how far, so they’ve been waiting for a long long time. He invited the entire church to come visit so we took the kids to see. And for the first time ever, I got all final 4 teams right in my bracket.

It has been so wet the last few days, Beth and I took the kids to Elkhart to Hart City to let them run around the travel trailers and motor homes. They just needed some running around time since they’ve been cooped up for a couple days.

The computer’s brain surgery finally has happened. The thing has been so pokey and buggy lately, I finally just transferred off all the files I needed, wiped the hard drive, and reinstalled windows. It fixed a few problems. Today we also finally got a tech out to fix our dish. For some reason it had been offline since Monday. Come to find out the reason was that it had never been waterproofed and the leads got corroded and finally gave out. But, now we’re up and watching again.

The weather has been so nice lately, I took the kids to Lowe’s while Beth was at Bible study and bought them some play sand to fill up the turtle. Alex has been asking for some sand for quite some time already but the weather hasn’t been good enough for them to go out and play in the sandbox until now. I even had the sand in before it was too dark for them to play in it.

Beth went to a slumber party of sorts tonight, some church ladies get-together thing with a pajama party theme. I got to keep the kids all night. I was thinking I should find them something besides the staples they always get, so I took them to Owen’s. Found them some pre-cooked roast pork, corn on the cob, and cucumbers.

Beth went to Michigan today for a big meeting with Mom G’s home administrators, or something like that...she is moving into an Alzheimer’s unit. Anyway, this big meeting that all the siblings had, had, had to attend lasted all of about 15 minutes. At least it got her back in time for her Bible study.

Once again, Beth and I went to do some grilling and realized we were out of propane. So, I went and got the propane exchanged.

We rented "Millions" tonight, a movie that Mom suggested. I’d never heard of it. It was really good. That’s neat when that happens.

Today was Alex’s birthday party. Dad and I picked up cake in the morning, which was all decked out with Lightning McQueen. Laura & Thomas came down for Ann Arbor, and several of our friends from church came over in the afternoon for the party. Caitlin Sager was fascinated with my digital camera and was absolutely delighted that I let her take pictures. She wound up taking about 120 of them, mostly of things like the floor, walls, coffee table... In the evening the entire family went to Mad Anthony’s for dinner, after that Dad & Thomas & I went to see "300" while the women took the kids home and got them to bed.