Happy Birthday Chris!

For the hubby's birthday this weekend I used Jenny to my advantage again and through her connections was able to take him to a nice hotel on Friday night. Also, thanks to my teenagers who are old enough to stay home with the littles.

I used my normal brilliant planning techniques and scheduled family pictures for the same afternoon. But I planned the location to be 45 minutes south of our house. On a Friday. See, that way we could hit rush hour trafic 4 times. First we hit it heading south on I-5 as we came into Portland. Then we got through Portland and hit the traffic of people LEAVING Portland, then, on our way home, we got to do it all over again. AND we got to do all this while trying to get our kids home and settled only to turn right back around and head back INTO Portland to surprise him with our big night away. I know. I'm awesome.

It was nice, really, to add that extra bit of tension to the always fun annual family picture event. I'm going to come right out and admit that when we arrived 30+ minutes late I realized that I had forgotten to bring a hairbrush (to make certain kids long hair look less stringy) and that I may have forgotten someone's underwear. Someone in a dress. And I forgot that the dress another kid was wearing never stays buttoned. And it buttons all down the back. So those strangers who didn't get a crotch shot from one child, got to see a child who appeared to be in the middle of disrobing.

Also, to prepare for our big night out, I had turned myself a nice shade of orange. He likes that in a woman. Who am I to deny him his birthday request? So, there we are all lined up to record for our posterity the Berg family in 2009, and we've got stringy hair, missing panties, and a mom who looks like she fell asleep in a tanning bed. Or eats alot of carrots. And yells alot. Mostly at the dad.

I'm so grateful for Photoshop.

Based on the previews I got from JenniferLynn, things should look great. She even assured me that there are things she can do to whiten me up a bit. Phew.

We did finally get to go on our date. We checked in downtown and walked over to the Newport Bay that sits down on the river. We ate from the $3 appetizer menu upstairs in the bar and managed to spend less than $15! Then we stayed up way too late watching a movie. We tried to sleep in, but it didn't work out, so we spent the morning watching those Dateline murder mystery shows. It was pretty awesome. It wasn't awesome looking at the white sheets and seeing my tan all over them. Ewww. Sorry, maid person, I hope that comes out for ya.


Here's our only picture from the night...

While we were running around getting ready for pictures and I'm all I TOLD YOU TO FIND WHITE TIGHTS!!! and WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOUR WHITE SHOES DON'T FIT? and the 2 youngest were like Hey! Mom's distracted. SWEET! and they plopped their non-underwear wearing butts down, grabbed the Costco pack of toilet paper from the upstairs linen closet,and sat there unwrapping each roll, throwing them gleefully over the balcony. Then they ran downstairs and stomped on every roll, so they're all flat. I could have moved them to get a picture of us heading out for our hot date, but I thought they added a dose of reality to the moment.