Happy Birthday, Vicki!

It's my birthday weekend, and I'm looking forward to spending time with my kids and reflecting back on life. (Do I hear a woo-hoo?) It seems every time I turn a new age, I tend to reflect forward as to what changes I can anticipate this next year and what changes I can make to improve my quality of life left on this earth. It's the last of my 40's…so I'm planning on "whooping it up" as I've been known to say. Next year I turn 50 and Briana turns 25 within only 2 weeks of each other, so we are planning a week long cruise and inviting all of our friends to join us in the 1/4 and 1/2 century birthday celebration. Our hope is to have at least 100 of our friends join us which should be fun.

Going to Cabo with Tamra was exactly what we needed to get our friendship back on track. I know it may have seemed like I made her work too hard to "court our friendship back"… but it was all in good fun. She and I had never gone on a girls trip before, and it was great spending one on one quality time with her. I felt like Tamra was on an adult spring break, doing body shots (first time I even heard of those) and talking about her sex life was like "holy crap …really?" The hotel we stayed at Casa Dorado was amazing, and in fact Tamra and I leave again next week to go back there to celebrate my birthday and Eddie's birthday with a bunch of other friends. I'm looking forward to leaving this cold, rainy, dreary Southern California weather.

When I watched this week's episode of she and I doing our first tequila shot, It made me laugh out loud! Exactly what is the correct order to do a shot? Is it the salt, lime and then the shot? As Tamra said there are really only three ways you can do it, and I really don't even know which way was the right way. Does anyone know?

Tamra continuing to want to talk about sex made me very uncomfortable. I have never been one to outwardly talk about people's sex lives, so when she told me she has sex for five hours I thought I was going to jump out of my skin. I mean really… If you do have the opportunity to do that, I guess that's great, I just have never had anyone say that to me before.

Watching Peggy's documentary about postpartum depression made me cry. She has mentioned it to me on several occasions, I just never knew how serious it was. I hope this helps other women to realize that they are not going crazy, and that it's a real illness that needs to be treated professionally and to be taken seriously. Micah seems like an amazing husband, and it was great seeing him be so supportive of her and standing beside her through that journey of being healed.

I found it interesting that Alexis is now designing dresses. I mean…really? It's one thing to like dresses and to get dresses altered, but it's another thing to invest your time and money into a business when she has such a demanding husband and three small babies. She said once this interferes with her family she will stop doing it, and I challenge her to rethink that any time she is spending designing dresses is time away from her family. I know all too well how owning your own business plays out on the time away from the family. In this turbulent economy right now, my advice is to be very lean on everything we invest money in, because I've seen all too many times they weren't prepared enough for the unknowns.

Watching Gretchen struggle with her decision to marry Slade or not is telling me that she is not ready to get married. She will know if and when the time is right, and it's obvious it's not now. I challenge her to just enjoy Slade and not worry too much about marriage and children right now. I don't think marriage is going to make her any happier. I think she has a big world out there, and she is realizing that maybe marriage isn't something she has to do right now.

Well I'm headed down to San Diego to celebrate my 49th birthday for the night. I hope all of you enjoyed this week's episode. For those of you that haven't bought my book More Than a Housewife yet, I would highly recommend reading it (www.vickigunvalson.com). Almost all of the emails that I have read from people that have bought the book said it provided them with a great insight into my life (that camera's don't tend to see) as well as information about building a successful business based on a purpose and drive (www.cotoinsurance.com). Those of you that are looking to purchase or review your current coverage, please visit my website for a free quote. We look forward to hearing from you.

Warmly,

Vicki Gunvalson