Happy Birthday!

Brian is eight! How in the world has all this time gone by already? Our big guy has another birthday under his belt and is definitely growing up on us. Growing up good, too. We are so proud of our son. He is helpful, mature, a great big brother, and so sweet and thoughtful. Happy Birthday Brian, we love you!!
We had a small family celebration, and will have a big party with school friends next weekend... just because it sounds like fun... but I think our little party will be my favorite.
Brad had to work, and the kids and I spent the day inside. Cleaning house, playing games, etc. The kids stayed in pj's all day. They both helped bake Brian's cake. I supervised, but they took turns reading the instructions, finding ingredients, etc. Good teamwork.
I frosted the cake... and unfortunately, the frosting was a little gooey. Good thing we pinned the cupcake towers on the castle with toothpicks or they would have slid right off! Ah well, the kids had fun decorating it, and it tasted good, that's what matters.
After making the cake I sent the kids off to shower... cake batter everywhere... so, I did manage to get them out of pj's temporarily, but they put new ones on as soon as they got dressed again. It was a bit of a chilly day and a good day to hang out in pj's and slippers, I suppose. I gave Brian the choice of what to make for dinner and he picked leftovers. What a sweetie! I didn't have to cook. Leftovers were burritos and they're always better the second day anyway... the spices in the meat always seem richer after a day.
Brad got a call around dinner time and his tortilla sat in the pan too long. Turned hard as rock! He cooked another, and Honor ran off with the ruined one. This is what she did with it! She grabbed the camera and photographed it herself as well - because I told her that we couldn't keep the tortilla! I'm serious when I say that we never know what to expect next from her.
So many candles... I had to hold the cake away to keep from getting singed.
My sweeties.
Honor was a big helper, she even helped me wrap and decorate Brian's presents. Even the heavy one...
... which turned out to be the Castle Lego set he had been wanting.

Happy Birthday Brian!!

2 by 2

And they came, two by two, to view the baby Jesus, and hang out with Shrek...

Sure, it would have been nice to have posted Christmas-y pics closer to Christmas, but the internet has not been cooperating. This picture of our unconventional and ever-changing nativity was too much fun not to share. I about spilled my coffee when I first saw the Ogre had joined the group in adoration. Well, why not ogres.. they have layers, right?

And why do we have a nativity set anyway? We're not Christian. We are trying to raise the kids with a good sense of God though, and an open-minded acceptance of all religious paths. We want them to have a good foundation of morals and values, an appreciation and acceptance of all forms of spiritual expression, and true belief in the divine. With this background we think they'll be able to find the religion that fits them best, and truly works for them, when they are old enough to know who they are. The details do not really matter - all religions are faulty by nature. Made by humans, and humans are not the perfect ones. Religion is just a tool we use to communicate with the Spirit, and so it is good to learn that all of man's religions have good and bad parts, true and false, etc. It's also important to learn that we do NOT have all of the answers, and we do NOT know what the true path is - only God knows that, and in my opinion, I think God is great enough to have made more than one true path. He made us all different, so, why not? We try to teach the kids a bit about everything as we come across it. They'll figure out the path that fits them best later, and, hopefully, will follow it truthfully while retaining a love and respect for other paths too. Anyway, a nativity set is a good, hand's-on (you better believe I got a set the kids can play with - clay breaks, but glues well too!) learning aid for Christianity. Ok, Shrek is a stretch... but we have to believe that god loves us all. Even ogres.

12 days

12 DAYS. A week and a half. What is this an estimate of? Download time. Yea. You heard me. For a 1.2MB file. Admittedly, it went down to hours, then minutes, and then to what appeared to be a reasonable time - although it lied... it is still in progress with no promise of any actual success.... but I saw it when it first came up. With DAYS. Twelve of them.

I hate it when the internet is broke.

Seems they fixed it, once.

Then, there was an earthquake.

DAYS!

arg.