Happy Anniversary Will

It was a pretty normal day.  Work in the AM, lunch with the vegan, Shane, you remember, work some more, then make the pizza for Pizza Friday.  We celebrated my mother's birthday a few days late today.  I made most of the cake last night but left the making of the 3rd kind of frosting and the assembly for today.  Not sure that was wise.  What kind of birthday cake has 3 kinds of frosting anyway for crying out loud?  (A: German chocolate, David Libovitz's recipe, with the rum syrup on each layer, except we didn't have any rum, of course, so I used a tiny bit of vanilla.  It was delicious.)  Whenever I make a chocolate birthday cake I always think about how you professed to hate chocolate but would go through phases of eating kit kat bars as if they were going out of style.  

The birthday crown still looks good.  You were by far the best at cutting the letters for the crowns.  I still don't understand how you made that look so easy.  

Liam loves to choose birthday presents for his grandparents.  He is on a run of selecting from those little wooden animal figures they have down at the hippy import store next to the fountain.  He got her a gray cat; looks sort of like hers that died.  You should see his face when they open the presents, I can't really describe the expression.  Some combination of happy, proud, glowing and yet still a little bashful.  It's something. 

Now I'm making waffles, many, many waffles because Liam and I invited all the boys from his preschool and their families to brunch tomorrow and I decided that I didn't want to be dealing with a hot waffle iron anywhere in a house that was trying to contain 6-8 boys, and their families, in good humor and safety.   In between batches of waffles I sort out the paint chips and draw little leaf shape cards for their nature treasure hunt in the yard.  My gosh, Will, the chickens have destroyed the yard. They have dug the dirt and eaten the plants pretty much everywhere.  And yet I just realized that between the eggs for the birthday cake and the eggs for the waffles I am going to have to call my mother in the morning and ask her to stop at the store and buy eggs to make sure we have enough to scramble for the brunch.  Boys sometimes eat a lot. 

I hope the boys all wear boots tomorrow.  I think about what nice leaf and plant cards you would have drawn for a nature treasure hunt.  Mine are just black and white, done with marker, emphasizing general shape.  I'm not going to hazard any color. 

I have new glasses, I wear them when I type on the computer.  Except I'm not wearing them right now.  Your mom's in DC with your sister, who is expecting a baby any day now.  We took Liam to see the family theater production of Go Dog Go last weekend and he wants to see it again this weekend.  Mushrooms are finally out, we'll be eating lots of them soon.  I miss you.