birthdays!

There's not much more I love in this world than birthdays.

I love planning parties, inviting people, having friends over to our house, cooking, giving gifts, surprises, and of course, cake.

This Friday is Brad's 29th birthday, and though many friends will be out of town for a retreat, I am really looking forward to sharing this celebration with people we care about (on Saturday around 6-- all are welcome!).

Growing up, birthdays were always a big deal in our family. In the kitchen, mom hung old, paper letters strung together by yarn that spelled "Happy Birthday". Every year we knew they were coming, but every year, I rushed to the kitchen on the morning of my birthday to see if they had appeared again. Mom insisted on baking a cake of our choice (chocolate on chocolate, thank you very much), customizing the dinner menu to the birthday kid's choice, and planning a special day to celebrate.

One of my favorite birthday memories stems from my 10th birthday: my birthday party that year was a dance in our basement with a 'real' DJ (one of my dad's college students who played some tapes over our stereo system). Being in 5th grade, the girls masked our deep desires to dance with an outer disgust at the idea of dancing. To solve this problem, mom made little slips of paper with pairs of things-- salt and pepper, ketchup and mustard, etc.-- and split the pairs among two different hats. Each girl drew a slip of paper, each boy drew from the other hat. Our job was to find our pair and dance with the assigned boy. I, of course, took matters in my own hands. I quickly learned that I could use my birthday-girl power to force other girls to give me their slip of paper, ensuring that I was dancing with ketchup, not pepper. I wonder if Andy Berli ever questioned why he kept drawing my pair over and over.
Also that year, screen printing on cakes was all the rage. My mom had my 4th grade, snaggletoothed school picture screenprinted on a sheet cake. I thought I was really something special until friends started estimating just how many pieces of cake my forehead took up.

I just don't understand those families that don't celebrate birthdays. It's the one day of the year that we allow ourselves to celebrate those who are most important in our lives. Birthdays are a big deal!

So, on Friday, please remember to wish Brad a happy birthday. He deserves one. He's the best man I know, and we should all show him thanks for being born!

Happy Birthday, BB!