Happy Birthday Again

“DAD! DAD! DAD, DAD, DAD! A GOBLIN ARMY IS APPROACHING FROM THE EAST! HELP ME DEFEAT THEM!”

I think my son was feeling better. Who am I kidding? Even when he’s sick, he’s packed with zip.

“Come eat your breakfast, big guy.”

“Mom! No time for breakfast! I can’t eat while a goblin army is attacking!”

Calvin.

But of course no Puck can refuse food, so eventually breakfast was completed.

Anyway, the big news of the day was Mom’s birthday. Puck greeted Mom, amy-crawl style from the living room floor, with a snap and pop – shower of shiny confetti – from his confetti gun.

Also in celebration, it began snowing as she and Carrie-Bri returned from Costco with a few Thanksgiving supplies.

While they were shopping, Francis had already done his uncle-damage, gifting Puck an incredibly loud secondhand lifeguard whistle. And also brought out the blowtorch. Of course.

“Come on, Puck. Let’s find something we can burn.”

By the time I located the smell wafting from the front porch, it was too late to tell Francis that he was burning one of Mom’s special organic eggs for no good reason. The brown-shelled egg burned even browner as it melted on top of the puddle of hand sanitizer that Francis had already burned. It stunk things up pretty nicely.

As the afternoon continued, Carrie-Bri and I recorded CardGals Podcast Episode 11. By the time we emerged from Dad’s basement office a relatively short amount of time later, the snow was falling heavier.

In honor of Mom’s birthday, I drove over to White Castle to pick up some of her favorites, a whole Crave Case of sliders.

As the afternoon continued, Dad came back early from work to celebrate and then Linnea-Irish drove up from a three-hour work shift with a midnight truffle blizzard for Mom.

“I made it with my own two hands,” she said flexing her fingers.

So while Mom ate her blizzard in front of the wood stove in the living room, Dad made plans to take her to their favorite Irish Pub in old O’Fallon.