An Anniversary and a Birthday

December 30th Matt and I celebrated our ten year anniversary. Matt's sister watched our kids for us and we spent a night in Frankenmuth--the city where we got engaged. We kind of recreated our engagement. Matt took me on a carriage ride like he did ten years ago and instead of an engagement ring, he surprised me with a mother's ring that has a birth stone for each child on it. Then we ate at the Bavarian Inn again. He's a sweetie--I love that guy. For my birthday yesterday, we made our annual trip to an indoor waterpark. No presents, no cake or ice cream. I just wanted to get away for a day. Truthfully, I've had my fill of inlaws and I wanted a good excuse not to invite them over for cake and ice cream. And I didn't want to have to wake up early, nag my kids out the door to school, do the homework song and dance, etc. Instead, I sat around in a swimsuit the whole day with a snow storm blowing outside, going from kiddie pool, to wave pool, to lazy river with Luke while Matt took the older kids on the slides. The place was nearly empty and because of that, they upgraded us to the coolest hotel room I've ever stayed in. It had two bedrooms, a master bath, a sitting room with a table, two balconies, 3 televisions including a huge flat screen TV (which we never watched because we were too busy swimming until we fell straight to bed). We drove down on the 7th, played in the park all afternoon until 9pm, got up the next morning and ate my birthday breakfast out, and swam and played all day until five, then drove the three hours home again. Elyse was able to ride everything this year and Paul surprised us by riding everything that his height allowed him to. He even tried the surfer wave twice--even after it flung him to the back wall. He had a grin on his face the whole time. Luke, who didn't get a nap the second day we were there, cried every time we left one area for another. I guess he was too tired to understand that we were not leaving, but going to do the next fun thing, and that we would probably make it back to the attraction we just left. He's a bit of a wreck today too. But all of us had a blast and I thoroughly enjoyed being lazy for two days with no real work to do.