Belated Birthday Greetings To ME :)

America's birthday earlier this month may be only a memory, but mine lives on through this tardy blog entry :).

I've never minded late birthday presents (after all, you still get something, correct?) and Better Late Than Never is one of my all time favorite sayings, right up there with Success is sweet, but it's secret is sweat, and We'll rest when we get to Heaven - two of my favorite Saturday chore time quotes.

Heck, I could do a whole blog post on all the quote sites there are out there (many of them very bad...and not the Good bad, but the Bad bad.) I'll have to let you discover them for yourself because my Click-On Linky Box is broken. I could wait to post until it's fixed, but I'm already getting hate mail from my own child(ren) telling me to "Please, please, please go ahead and blog about something happy so I don't have to keep reading that previous sad blog post." He/she sends very polite hate mail.

And speaking of happy....What could be happier than pictures of my 53rd birthday ...Unless maybe it was pictures of my 40th birthday (which it might surprise you to know, is about as far back as I'd like to go, thank you very much.)

So here are the much anticipated birthday pictures for your viewing enjoyment and not for your magnifying (my pores are big enough in real life), and not for your photographic criticism since these were taken with my same ol' camera.

I used my same ol' camera because it is my only camera, despite what I might have thought when a camera-sized-package showed up on the foyer table 4 days before my birthday. And what would you expect to find in a package that was exactly the size of something that you had been hinting about for almost a year on your blog (and lots o' other places)?

If you guessed a jewelry box, You're right! (and you're also probably related to me.)

Yes, inside the camera-sized-package was a jewelry box... A jewelry box I love...A jewelry box that is the exact, Robin's egg blue and coffee w/ cream brown of my new bathroom... A jewelry box that is indeed bad (not the Bad bad, but the Good bad)...A jewelry box ordered over the internet and was (according to the purchaser) an extravagant purchase.

It doesn't take pictures, but I still adore it :)

This is Winston and me both smiling. I'm smiling because I'm sitting contentedly on the couch in the family room while a scrumptuous meal is being prepared for me in the kitchen. I think Winston is smiling because he knows I'm going to be embarrassed when I realize how far my stomach is sticking out. I must've supposed my hand was covering it. It wasn't.





Daniel, Andrew, and my HOH were the 3 Cooks for the day. Daniel is pictured here stirring the alfredo sauce.




Instead of requesting the predictable, annual Birthday and Mother's Day shrimp salad, I thought I'd liven things up a bit by suggesting a few ingredients I'd like included without actually asking for a specific meal. Asparagus and scallops, those are the only clues I gave them. Risky, eh?








The final meal was fettucine alfredo with scallops (and a red sauce for those watching their waist lines....which I'm obviously not); warm asparagus spinach salad with a blue cheese vinagrette dressing; and hot crusty bread straight from the breadmaker.



The piece de resistance was a Boston Cream Pie (which is actually a cake, but who wants to quibble over a little word when there's custard filling involved!)






Hunter came for lunch (Shepherd was out of town) to be with his favorite Mother (and to have a free meal). Hunter is my 2nd son, 4th born child of 11 - and my noncomformist. He's a deep thinker and a soulful blogger. He's an amazing, artistic photographer. And he now has earrings. I give you permission to magnify just this one photo so you can see them.

He recently asked me how long it would be before I could talk to him without staring at his ears.

Never. That pretty much sums it up :)

If you naive mothers of preschoolers would like to believe that it will get easier after your children grow up, Go on and live in your little delusional fairy land. It's hard all the way up - from in utero until way past the wedding day. But you love them so deeply and with a love that's so permanent you learn to look past their earrings and into their hearts. The hearts that make their own decisions now and have to live with the consequences that you can't protect them from - nor would you want to. And you try to believe them when they tell you they love you just as much as they ever did.




Do any of you remember the litle Birthday Teaser I posted a couple of weeks ago? The one that was supposed to lure you into continuing to read my sporadically updated blog? The one where I told you that I got four of the same thing as birthday presents? I don't know how you've contained the suspense thus far, but contain it no more....Because here they are!


Four Hand-Knitted Book Marks





Molly is taking knitting lessons and apparently she's passing her new skill on to Alex, Andrew, and Winston. (Not pictured: hand knitted bath bag and knitted tea mat.)
A mom just can not have too many knitted gifts. Good thing.








Per several reader's requests (OK, there was just one, but I'm assuming she speaks for you all), I am going to start a Bloggy House Tour next week. Why next week, you ask? (1) Because that gives me at least 7 days before I have to think about it. And (2) My kids will all be at camp and I will have a clean house to photograph.