I’m rocking with the blog posts today.  And then it’ll be three more weeks of silence…

The day after we went to the beach was Mary’s 5th birthday.  She had been talking and talking and talking about this day for nearly a year – ever since Billy’s birthday back in February.  Billy has the first birthday of the year; Mary has the last birthday of the year.  Logically, we all know our birthdays come one year apart.  Mary, a typical 4-5 year old, does not see it that way.  She only understands that she is the last one every year to have a birthday and feels we have done this intentionally to make her suffer.

To make matters slightly worse, we hadn’t yet met any little girls her age, so even a modest gathering in her honor was not going to happen.

Fortunately, Bill was off that Monday, so he took her out to lunch somewhere with a play area.  They might have even gone to the mall to ride the carousel.  While they were gone, we decorated the dining room with a birthday banner (this is way more decorating than any of my children ever get).  I made sure she had a pile a presents – nothing very expensive.  And we had soda, which my kids will tell you is a very special treat here.  Bill called when he was almost home, and we turned off all the lights and hid.  She was so startled when we yelled “surprise” that she collapsed on the floor and cried.

Oops.

She quickly recovered.  And we had a lovely party.

I don’t know how it is possible to take such blurry pictures with my Nikon D90, a lovely and clever camera, but my stand-in photographer managed to do so.  These are the best of the bunch.

SURPRISE!!!!

Sorry!  We didn’t mean to scare you!

The birthday girl