Happy Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday. While it was just another day in my book, with the bonus of an excuse to ignore household chores, it was extremely important to most of my kids.

Ellen was the chief party planner. She had a table cloth and "happy birthday" confetti to decorate it. She purchased the streamer, shown above, from her classroom store. She calculated the size of the room so that she could figure out how much to use for me and what should be saved for Andy's birthday next week. She helped with the cake and was responsible for the writing on it. She did all the wrapping, I think. She was jumping out if her skin waiting for everyone to wake up so I could open presents.

Megan was excited, too. She put tags on all the presents. She helped with the cake. And she knew just what to get me. You can't tell her that I knew. She was very certain that I needed a new rag. She claimed that I always run out. It needed to be pretty and to have a heart on it. (The only thing I can figure is that I asked her to get a stack of laundry and she felt put upon, because I never run out of rags.) Andy, lovable but not a shopper, was procrastinating on getting them to the store. So last Friday Megan asked me if I would take her to the store to get Dad his gift. I asked her what she had decided to get him. A rag. I avoided that. So yesterday morning I opened a bag of rags (no hearts :-( ), Magic Erasers, and a sponge. Just what I always wanted! There was more, but that was Megan's contribution.

Timothy loves a birthday because he knows that it means cake. And we don't enforce the rule about eating dinner to be eligible for dessert. He was disappointed that we couldn't have cake for lunch but was very happy with his chocolate dinner. Turns out that he is an Indian giver, too. They got me a new hat which he wanted. He threw a mini-tantrum in the car about it.

Drew cares enough to say happy birthday, but after that he's in it for the cake.