I’m in my prime again – I turned 31 this past Friday. I had a great birthday weekend! Our tradition at Logos is to take coworkers out to lunch on their birthdays, so I had a great lunch at Lemon Grass Café (Thai) on Friday afternoon. On Friday evening, we had friends over for dinner, with whom we watched the latest VeggieTales video with my daughters, and then played a rousing game of Settlers of Catan!

Julie and the girls took me out for a birthday dinner on Saturday night. It was my choice of restaurants, so I picked On Rice – I do love Thai food. We started with three inexpensive appetizers, hoping to find some things that the girls would enjoy (we did). We followed that up with spicy soup (for me), garlic chicken (for Julie), and fried rice (for the girls). Our waitress found out that it was my birthday, so we were serenaded with the birthday song, followed by complimentary fried bananas and coconut ice cream, which I’d never had before, but were delicious. It couldn’t have been better.

On Sunday, we went to church, and then had Julie’s family over for a great dinner. I even got a few more presents, including two Settlers of Catan expansions, one that extends the game to support more than four players, and another that adds the Cities and Knights rules. I can’t wait to play!

On my way home from work on Friday, I stopped by Best Buy to spend some birthday money – I bought a nice portable CD player that plays MP3 files, so that I can record a number of albums on one CD. I got a car kit with it for free, so I was able to rock out to another of my birthday presents on my way to work on Monday – the latest Switchfoot album, Nothing is Sound.

Thanks to everyone who made my birthday weekend so much fun!

I was at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference all last week with three coworkers. We had a great time learning about the new technologies for programmers that will be coming out of Microsoft in the next couple of years.

Microsoft certainly knows how to spoil programmers. There was an endless supply of food and beverage in addition to the three meals they provided each day. All sorts of free stuff was given away, including a nice laptop bag, software, and tons of T-shirts and other “swag.” To top it off, they reserved Universal Studios Hollywood for PDC attendees, and nearly everything in the park was free – food, drinks, snacks, and even the carnival games. It had been a long time since I’d been there, so I enjoyed the latest movie-themed attractions, including an indoor roller-coaster, an outdoor show, and two 3D movies with interactive chairs.

Still, it’s good to be back home and getting back into regular routine. It’s fun to do something unusual every once in a while, but real life is more satisfying. Speaking of which, time to get to work…

Last night was “parent night” at Lynden Christian, so Julie and I got to spend some time listening to Sarah’s and Bethany’s teachers talk about how the school year will go. It sounds like Sarah and Bethany have a lot of learning to look forward to, and a lot of fun as well. I think both teachers are just what Sarah and Bethany need to have a great year.

Rebecca is sleeping in her "big girl bed" tonight. She's had a few good naps in it, so we're making the transition. The crib is still in the room in case of an emergency, but we'll be dismantling it soon. Before and after:

We had a garage sale this past weekend; Friday and Saturday, to be exact. A coworker asked if it was to get rid of stuff or to make money – definitely the latter. We can get rid of stuff easily enough by donating it to Second Chance or the Hope Chest, but it's fun to make a little money by selling some of our old things, invariably to help pay for their replacements. Among the particularly productive sales were our extension ladder, which we no longer need to get on the roof of our single-story house, and our trusty old dining room table and chairs, whose replacements should be arriving at Front Street Home Furnishings in Lynden this weekend. Julie deserves all of the credit, of course; she set it all up and monitored the proceedings (along with a few relatives who brought stuff of their own). Thanks, hon!