Birthdays, Birthdays, and more birthdays!

September is the month to have birthdays in my family! My brother, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, aunt, mother-in-law, son, and myself all have birthdays. And my grandparents had their anniversary in September.

I celebrate mine on the 11th which has become a national day of mourning but since I was born 25 years before it became a national day of mourning, I celebrate life anyhow. This year I thought it would be nice to have a coconut cream pie but didn't want the ones that come from the grocery bakery. Several calls to Servatti's and Bonboneri yielded no results but we finally found an Italian bistro not far away that would sell a whole pie for $45.00 - we skipped the pie! I told the boys I'd take them to McDonald's for my birthday since it accomplishes two purposes, I don't have to cook and they get to play in the Playland and this gives me a break! But it turned out that Philip was free over lunchtime and so we went as a family and I didn't have to pay. It was great - we never get to do stuff like that during the day because of Philip's work schedule so it was a nice family time.

My husband hit the jackpot with his gift this year! I've been craving sushi, have no idea why, but he bought me a tray of crunchy shrimp and man was it good! Wow! You can't beat good (cooked!) sushi. 

Then on the 19th Daniel celebrated his 6th birthday! Daddy always takes them out for breakfast on their sixth birthday and so off to First Watch they went early that morning.

 Evening celebration with a birthday supper of stromboli and Doritos with Pop-pop, Gramme, Paul and Myra. His cake was to be a hot air balloon. His birthday was quite the day and I didn't start decorating until 2:30 so it wasn't that great.

 A policeman uniform.

And all policemen must carry guns, with holsters. He was delighted! 

He also got his first pocket knife which is also very cool.

Then came Stephen's fourth birthday on October 2nd. He wanted a clown cake so I used a clown pan that I had and tried to make it colorful. We had Pop-pop and Gramme and our friends Darnell and Amit join us for his birthday supper of lasagne (thought he had wanted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!). These guys join us twice a week for supper and the boys have just adopted them as part of the family.

 He received several knights with horses and a dragon.

 Darnell playing with the knight

 Happy boy! They have already provided hours of entertainment.

He also received a set of sharks from Gramme and Pop-pop.

No more birthdays now until next spring!