Birthday and Halloween 2011
Well I had my birthday on Saturday and it was a really nice day. :)
Charlotte arranged to have a birthday cake made for me. She knows my favorite cake is from a bakery in Amherst called "The Dessert Deli"...they made our wedding cake. They do a cake called a "Neopolitan", like the ice cream. It's a layer of white cake, a layer of chocolate, another layer of white cake, all separated with strawberry buttercream with real strawberries in it. And then they frost the whole thing with vanilla buttercream icing and coat it with a thin layer of real dark chocolate. Oh...it's heavenly I assure you.
So Char ordered one from college and had her boyfriend Joe (who lives here) deliver it...
And I sent her this iPhone picture of me with my cake. :) And then we sat and had cake with Joe and later we watched my favorite MST3K episode ("The Day The Earth Froze"). It was a very nice way to turn 46.
All my Halloween orders were sent out on time too...yay! So, for me, Halloween is actually a nice chance to take a deep breath and relax for a few days, before the Holiday orders start piling in. I decorated the front yard with spooky stuff this year...
Styrofoam gravestones + great garden mums = perhaps not all that spooky.
Kiba is terribly curious about Halloween...
He waits by the door and is happy to stuff his head into all the bags when the kids open them. He doesn't take anything; he just stuffs his head in the bag because he is curious (and, I swear, because he thinks it's funny).
We had so many children this year...cute little wee ones. The neighborhood is rejuvenated again with small children. Char's generation has moved on to college and a new crop of little ones start the cycle again.
I thought I'd be sad without Char here for Halloween and my birthday...but I was not. Maybe there's something wrong with me. I'm just so darn happy that she's in college and doing so well there (she got 99% on her mid-term paper for Sociology...99%!), I'm not even sad at all. Sometimes I miss her but only in the same way I missed her while she still lived here; I miss the twelve-year-old Charlotte who went for bike rides with me, or the nine-year-old Charlotte who liked to go to museums and the zoo with me. I miss my little Charlotte, and I probably always will. But I'm very proud of my adult Charlotte who is doing so well, so far from home. She's exactly where she needs to be, and I think that's great.
Another fun fact; having Char gone has been an adjustment, but not as hard as you'd think. Basically I'm getting back in touch with the person I was before I had Char. I'm re-learning how to be selfish and think only of myself (sort of the way I was when I was twenty-something) and it's been very liberating. Becoming a mother is a process of learning to put yourself and your needs secondary to your child's needs, and I got very good at that. But now that she doesn't need that kind of maintenance, it's so refreshing to wake up in the morning and say to myself "What do I want to do today?"
We are having a nice week of warmish weather and I'm using every opportunity to go out in my kayak or away for a nice trail ride on my bike. Really...I don't feel forty-six at all.
Charlotte arranged to have a birthday cake made for me. She knows my favorite cake is from a bakery in Amherst called "The Dessert Deli"...they made our wedding cake. They do a cake called a "Neopolitan", like the ice cream. It's a layer of white cake, a layer of chocolate, another layer of white cake, all separated with strawberry buttercream with real strawberries in it. And then they frost the whole thing with vanilla buttercream icing and coat it with a thin layer of real dark chocolate. Oh...it's heavenly I assure you.
So Char ordered one from college and had her boyfriend Joe (who lives here) deliver it...
And I sent her this iPhone picture of me with my cake. :) And then we sat and had cake with Joe and later we watched my favorite MST3K episode ("The Day The Earth Froze"). It was a very nice way to turn 46.
All my Halloween orders were sent out on time too...yay! So, for me, Halloween is actually a nice chance to take a deep breath and relax for a few days, before the Holiday orders start piling in. I decorated the front yard with spooky stuff this year...
Styrofoam gravestones + great garden mums = perhaps not all that spooky.
Kiba is terribly curious about Halloween...
He waits by the door and is happy to stuff his head into all the bags when the kids open them. He doesn't take anything; he just stuffs his head in the bag because he is curious (and, I swear, because he thinks it's funny).
We had so many children this year...cute little wee ones. The neighborhood is rejuvenated again with small children. Char's generation has moved on to college and a new crop of little ones start the cycle again.
I thought I'd be sad without Char here for Halloween and my birthday...but I was not. Maybe there's something wrong with me. I'm just so darn happy that she's in college and doing so well there (she got 99% on her mid-term paper for Sociology...99%!), I'm not even sad at all. Sometimes I miss her but only in the same way I missed her while she still lived here; I miss the twelve-year-old Charlotte who went for bike rides with me, or the nine-year-old Charlotte who liked to go to museums and the zoo with me. I miss my little Charlotte, and I probably always will. But I'm very proud of my adult Charlotte who is doing so well, so far from home. She's exactly where she needs to be, and I think that's great.
Another fun fact; having Char gone has been an adjustment, but not as hard as you'd think. Basically I'm getting back in touch with the person I was before I had Char. I'm re-learning how to be selfish and think only of myself (sort of the way I was when I was twenty-something) and it's been very liberating. Becoming a mother is a process of learning to put yourself and your needs secondary to your child's needs, and I got very good at that. But now that she doesn't need that kind of maintenance, it's so refreshing to wake up in the morning and say to myself "What do I want to do today?"
We are having a nice week of warmish weather and I'm using every opportunity to go out in my kayak or away for a nice trail ride on my bike. Really...I don't feel forty-six at all.