Happy Birthday, Joel

How come months can pass with nothing of importance happening, and then one week will come along that makes you long for those college days when you could sleep two or three hours a night and function normally?

This is one of those weeks, but mercifully each event is a happy one, like today: Joel's birthday.

We celebrated last night after my husband returned from a three-day Iowa All State trip, and although he had already received his main gift, we showered him with some Gander Mountain gift cards and a turkey frier.

But the real pièce de résistance of the night was the card that each of our sons lovingly prepared for their Dad.

Cael did a nice job of decorating his card with a cake on the front and inside, but the trouble started when he tried to mark a "31" near the lollipops balloons he'd drawn.  When he realized that his three was backward, he corrected it and created a pseudo-number that looked more like "81" than anything. 

On the back, he insisted on including what was supposed to say, "Ooh la la, Pizza Hut", something that he's picked up from school, but because he was in something of a backward mood, his "z" letters looked more like an "s", prompting Joel to wonder exactly where one could find the "Pissa Hut".

But Graham... Graham's was my favorite part.

He can write a few words here and there, so I had him write out "Dad" and his own name, which featured a big, backwards "G", although neither of the boys have had problems with inverting symbols before, and told him that I would write out whatever message he wanted in the card.

"Happy Birthday.  Dear Daddy!  I love you more than bad guys.  Crayons."

And if that doesn't soothe the sting of thirty-one, I don't know what would.