Daddy's day

How many "takes" does it take to get a decent photo of Daddy with his kids on his birthday? I don't know, because I gave up after 11 tries. What you see here is the best I got.



Weird blinks, glares on glasses and squirmy kids just don't lend themselves well to a keepsake portrait.

I'm a few days late in writing about it, but we had a lot of fun celebrating Jeff's birthday this weekend. AJ, of course, is happy with any ocassion that involves cake. (Plus I suspect he's keenly aware that his birthday comes next, considering we've only told him about a million times that he has to wait until after Daddy's birthday before his will get here.)

So on Saturday we went shopping in preparation for having some friends over for dinner that night. At Sam's Club, we found a cute little cheesecake surrounded by cupcakes – all smothered in gooey chocolate frosting. For AJ, this was beyond exciting. He ran up to the first woman he saw and announced, "Today, today, today, today is already my Dad's birthday!"

The person with whom AJ chose to share this information was an older woman. And she clearly was delighted by his exuberance. She responded, "It's your Dad's birthday. How old is he?"

That stumped AJ. He turned to Jeff, who politely answered, "41."

The woman smiled, "Well, happy birthday. I'm 91."

How could AJ have known what an inspirational person he had chosen with whom to strike up a conversation? Here was a woman, out and about very capably on her own on a frigidly cold day, who was at least 15 years older than I would have guessed. Suddenly 41 didn't seem very old at all. At the same time, I know AJ cheered her up, because as we passed her later in another aisle, she smiled and waved to him.

On an unrelated note, as I'm typing this, a loud boom just sounded from my garage. If I lived in a rougher part of town, I might be concerned. As it is, with the current temperature of -16, I suspect we didn't get all the pop cans in after the last blast of cold weather.