The Amazing Twin Adventure

My birthday was this weekend and I turned 31. I'm still not quite sure how I got to 31 so quickly, I still feel like I'm about 19! But I had a great weekend full of celebration. We celebrated with Matt's mom on Friday night with delicious take-out and cake! Not to mention lovely flowers and lots of gifts! I got several books that I've been wanting, and Pat took Mason shopping. He picked out sweet little silver and black heart shaped earrings. Pat said he told the saleslady, "I want hearts for my mommy. Just hearts." So sweet! And on Sunday (my actual birthday) I went out to lunch with my mom and sisters and my friend LeAnne. We had the most delicious lunch at a fantastic restaurant, where I got more books- yay!!! Then I went on an adventure with my mom and Elizabeth.
My dad's new hobby is landscape photography, and he's really doing some amazing work. He had taken a picture of an old, abandoned, falling-down antebellum house in a tiny town not far from here. I LOVED the picture- the house is truly my dream house, so my dad gave me the print for my birthday. So after lunch, my mom, sister and I decided to go see the house in person. The house has no front door (well, it has one, but it's sitting in the parlor!) so you can just walk right in. Throwing caution (and fears of ghosts, police, and rotting floorboards) to the wind, that's exactly what we did. This house was magnificent. 12 foot ceilings, huge leaded glass windows, grand staircase, halls bigger than my living room. If someone would fix it up, it would be absolutely breathtaking. Of course, it would cost somewhere in the range of a million dollars to fix it, but it would be soooo worth it. I just sent Matt out to get lottery tickets for tonight's $257 million dollar drawing, and if we win that's the first thing I'm buying!
The only other interesting thing from the past week was open house at Mason's school. His teacher said he's like a different child. Apparently, he was flat crazy those first couple of bad days, but she said since we put our reward system in place at home, he's been awesome! Yay!!!! He has gotten a sticker on his chart every day since then, and I am so proud of him. We've also started having homework time every night. Even though he's not assigned homework we're taking 15-20 minutes each night to work on letter and number recognition, writing, sight words and letter sounds and I'm amazed at how quickly he's learning. He's such a smart kid and he really enjoys all the encouragement and praise he gets.