Birthday/Links/Randomness Round-Up

This is my nephew Jett—he gets a lot of freebies based on his cuteness. Well-deserved!

My birthday was a mixed bag.

First off, I was thrilled to hear from each and every one of you who gave me a shout out yesterday through Twitter/Facebook/texts/phone calls. Knowing that I have such quality people in my corner lifts me up to Cloud Nine.

Secondly, we received a notice on Thursday that our apartment had been "randomly selected" out of the complex to be tested for energy efficiency—THE NEXT DAY (a.k.a. my birthday). I am wary of repairmen coming into my house anyway, but the notice stated that the testing would take three hours to complete. I decided that we were going to hightail it out of the house whenever they arrived.

Cut to the next day, minutes before 9 am, when there was a knock at the door and a jumpsuited man behind it.

On our forced adventures, we went to a new-to-us park, breakfast at Burger King, and thrifting (even though we had been the day before!). By the time we finished up all of that business, it was lunchtime, so we took Caleb and our friend Matt to lunch.

Up until then, the day had been fine enough. I had a great time being out of the house, which I might not have done except for the testing. I also enjoyed being able to see Caleb in the middle of the day, though I wanted to steal him away from work for the remainder of the day.

Side note: I taught Jack yesterday that stealing a person is called "kidnapping." He now is obsessed with kidnapping.

But stuff got real for the rest of the day.

My whole family is battling a cold, which has made all of us a little grumpy. The grumpiness made it so that no one took a nap yesterday. Jack's thrifted toy of choice, which was a motorcycle, was accompanied by a cowish mooing "driving" sound that drove me batty. I was driven to angry tears over the words of a "friend." I realized that I hadn't made my birthday cake until it was nearly five pm. And we didn't have any spaghetti sauce for dinner. Add to this that Caleb arrived home with some scary chest spasms, and I was over it.

The night ended well, with watching my Adele Live at Royal Albert Hall concert DVD (soul-stirring!) and eating chocolate cake. I am 27 no matter what, now. And that's okay.

Here are some fascinating links to keep this post from being a bummer:

• I got a crafty shout out from one of my favorite summer events: The Davis County Fair!
• Pocky from Living Apockylypse had some fun Comic Con adventures.
• If you're interested, get spiritually uplifted by watching the LDS General Conference this weekend.
• Kam from Campfire Chic has started doing Project Life, and it's teaching her some great lessons.
• Here are some stinkin' charming old-school photos of Amy from Lemon and Raspberry.
• Vanessa of Little Gray Pixel accomplished a big goal and watched 100 great movies. Go congratulate her!