Happy Birthday Daddy!

Since Jeremy's real birthday took place while we were at the Property, we celebrated it the following week. According to our tradition, we made a birthday banner to hang the day of the party!

The original plan for the day was for us to leave the boys at a friend's house for the morning, so Jeremy and I could go on a date, and then pick them up after lunch and have the party at dinnertime. But the best laid plans...

Iain started running a fever the night before. We thought about calling off the morning activities, but he seemed to be doing okay, so we brought the boys along. First stop, Land of a Thousand Hills coffee shop. As the name suggests, they serve coffee grown in Rwanda, and the company is involved in sustainable coffee growing, fair trade, micro-loans, and helping villages become self-sustaining. Besides the fact that they are working in Rwanda, the place was seriously the coolest coffee shop ever - it's in a historic house and it's beautiful and so interesting.

After some green strawberry tea (yum), we went to historic Roswell to walk around and see the pre-Civil War era dam and mill. It was very hilly (see below) and beautiful. We had some interesting discussions with Iain about the Civil War, who won, why the Union soldiers burned the mill, etc.

Then after lunch at Arby's (during which Jeremy got to order anything he wanted!), we headed home for naps and rest time. I cooked dinner and made dessert, and when the boys got up, we decorated the dining room.

It was Iain's idea to get green streamers (he calls them ribbons). They both decided we should hang them in the doorway, and they call it Jail. Cory ran back and forth through the jail for a good long time saying, "In jail! Out the jail! In jail! Out the jail!"

We made banana pudding for dessert - it's one of Jeremy's favorites. Iain really, really really wanted to have Frog and Toad on the top. I thought about using icing, but didn't have what I needed, so I tried with marshmallows. Do you know how hard it is to make Frog and Toad, reading books, with marshmallows, while a sick three-year-old is directing you?

When I finished, the poor little guy's eyes welled up with tears. "It doesn't look like Frog and Toad," he said so sadly. "It looks like Robot and Toad." (Well, at least I got one!) I tried to fix them, but I just couldn't make Frog look like Frog in Iain's mind.

"Daddy will think it's Robot and Toad," he said, chin quivering.

"No he won't," I promised. "He will take one look and know it's Frog and Toad."

And a well-timed whisper in Jeremy's ear insured that. You should have seen Iain light up when Jeremy make a big deal about how great Frog and Toad looked on his "cake." What a good dad!

(That's Frog on the left, with a book in his lap and a hat on - yes, they both had to wear hats, too. And Frog's hat had to look like an ear. Don't ask me why! And Toad is crouched on the right, looking at a book that sits on the pudding. Yeah, I know.)

We had a lovely day in all, despite the poor little boy's fever. We love you, Jeremy/Daddy! Happy birthday!