Birthdays

Last week was Al's birthday. We had a simple family celebration with dinner at a Chinese buffet and a birthday pie. In my family of origin we always celebrated birthdays with a cake. My mom would put candles on the cake and carry it out while we all sang "Happy Birthday." Al's family didn't really do the whole cake thing and he doesn't particularly like cake anyway. It's taken awhile for me to help Al understand how important it is for me to have a cake on my birthday. I've also found that I cannot celebrate Al or the kids' birthdays without a birthday dessert of some sort either. For me not providing a birthday dessert is like saying, "I don't really care about you." So, we compromised with a pie. I stuck a candle in the middle of the pie and brought it out to Al while Josiah and I sang "Happy Birthday."

We planned to go out for a date on Friday night, but Al got pretty sick. So we stayed at home where Al slept and I took care of the kids. My "warrior princess" came out as I set aside my own desires for the weekend to take care of and protect the family. I'm not complaining though. I love taking care of my family, whether "mothering" someone who is sick or looking for ways to make a birthday boy feel loved.

Yesterday was Josiah's birthday. I stayed up late Saturday night wrapping gifts, making a nice "Happy Birthday Josiah!" sign and cleaning up the house. We all slept in (a nice gift from the kids to us, perhaps) and I made apple waffles for breakfast. Josiah opened his presents and then we all went to the Museum of Science and Industry to see the Star Wars exhibit. We got to the museum around 11:30, but had to wait until 3:30 to enter the Star Wars exhibit. We all had fun and were pretty tired by the time we left at 5:00. Since Al had to leave for a meeting, we ate birthday cake and ice cream for dinner. Then Josiah started putting together the Lego Stars Wars kit he got for his birthday and Elijah spent some time resting. Later we ate some soup and went to bed.

So I am exhausted, but happy. I also have a bunch of leftover pie and cake in addition to all of the Halloween candy laying around.

P.S. I added some Halloween photos to a previous post.