Thursday, February 9, 2017

Happy Birthday Kirsty!


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A few weeks ago, I took one of those silly Facebook quizzes about "which season are you?"  Anyone who knows me well, knows that winter is my least favorite season of the year.  I find enjoyable things about winter--mostly because I have kids, and I think that me moaning about being constantly cold could get really old quickly.

But spring and summer are my favorites.  I love fall too but it presages the dreaded winter so I am always enjoying cider and foliage and hearing in my head "yeah, just WAIT!"    However, Facebook, the "accurate" news source of our time decreed that I love winter best.  When I was speaking of this with my wife, she said "but you celebrate everything.  All.the.time."  When viewed that way, I can see why FB got it wrong.  There are a lot of festive things in the cold months and I do celebrate with an excess of abandon.

Take yesterday for instance.  My wife's birthday is actually today.  But had the weather not gifted us with a blizzard, none of us would be home today. She had several client jobs scheduled, I would have work, Rob would have school and KC had 3 dance classes tonight.  So planning ahead we decided that we would celebrate the last day of her 57th year and hold the party on Wednesday.  Wednesday is our least busy night of the week and we could safely guarantee that all would be home.  I was even able to put in for a vacation day so that I could help the littler kids get the party ready.

And party we did.  We decided on an emoji theme.  A visit to the dollar store got the supplies we needed to make the emoji face party favors and the cardboard for the placemats.  We took emoji faces that were sort of tailored to each of our personalities and mounted them on small yellow plates. I taped those to the rulers.  There are 2 faces to each favor, so you can spin it according to your feeling at the moment.  The rulers came in 3 packs for a $1.00 so this was literally a very low cost, fun to make party favor. If I was doing this as a party for kids, I would have the components to create an emoji face but they'd have to choose the sections and glue them on.  But I was doing this, "adult style!" We made the placemats with graphics I got on the computer and printed off.  After trimming the cardboard for the placemats we had nice sections left and we used those to make signs for the dining room walls.  For instance giant LOL, I heart Mom, etc.

We had my wife's favorite meal--Chinese take out from her favorite restaurant.  Then we gifted and ate cake.  There was much laughter and fun.  It was a wonderful party and a wonderful night. (insert happy emoji face here!)

Super Bowl Monday

Our company unexpectedly gave us Monday off if the Patriots won!  This of course added to the all ready high level of SuperBowl frenzy in our home.  We are a big football family and New England Patriots fans all the way.  While much of last night looked like I would be reporting to work as usual, a series of mistakes by the Falcons, some good playing and some good fortune on the part of the Patriots, and we had our 5th Superbowl win and a day off!    It was a wonderful moment to remind my kids that you keep trying always.  The Patriots could have given up and just phoned in the balance of the game at almost any point.  But they kept their focus, they kept perservering and luckily, it resulted in a win.