Wow, what a week

This past week has been so full of ups and downs. I think I went through my deepest depression yet managed to pull myself out of my rut in a matter of days. There has definitely been plenty weighing on my mind. I'm not going to get into the negative though. :)
I managed to smile my way through my actual birthday in hopes that the boys didn't catch on to how I was really feeling. They had fun, and while I just wanted to keep my butt planted on the sofa I managed to smile genuine smiles a few times.
While the kids were at school I was talking to Melanie, she serenaded me with "Wind Beneath My Wings." I wish I could have recorded it. While we were on the phone the florist arrived with a beautiful bouquet and two teddy bears from Derrick.

When the boys got home from school they wanted to bake and decorate cakes for me, so we whipped up three 9 inch cakes and went crazy decorating. We had intended on having ice cream with the cakes but once they were decorated we decided that we were going to have plenty of sugar before the ice cream so we held off. Here are the kids cakes. Here is Luke's cake:

Here is Brandon's cake:

They were both great, and Brandon managed to leave enough room to put two candles on his cake. They sang Happy Birthday, I made my wish and blew out my candles.
Wednesday and Thursday seem kind of a blur looking back, but Friday was a big day. We were up early to get Brandon to school to prepare for his performance in his schools annual Ryukyu Festival (you can read more about it in my previous blog). Saturday morning we ran errands and did some things around the house before good friends of ours came by with dinner and a green velvet cake. I love when she bakes cakes!
We had a great evening, had fun with the boys being silly and found that my cats have a strange obsession with Brain. :) Before it got too late they were on their way home so we could get ready for another early morning.
We were up by 6 am on Sunday, Brandon asked "who does this?" It was for a good reason though. We were up, packed and on the road by 7 to head south to Camp Foster to catch our tour to go whale watching in the East China Sea. It took about 30 minutes to get to our first destination, we saw a few spouts of water as the whales surfaced for air, then they were off and the chase began. Our boat along with about 8 others were on the go following the water spouts. Before long we were watching the humpback whales surfacing and throwing their tails in the air before diving back down. Brandon and I each had a camera in hand but were so caught up in the action happening around us we were only able to catch a few snapshots of the whales. With or without the pictures we had an awesome time. I only wish we would have gone the previous years we were here.
Here's the ridge of a whales back before diving back under.

And to the left of the boats you can see a whales tail just above the water

And this last one, it's a little more difficult to see but just to the right and down some from the mirror you can see the spray from the whale's blowhole.

There was a hole lot of crazy emotions that filled this week, but so many great things happened as well. What a great way to wrap up my birthday week!