as i wrote yesterday, there was no time to prepare for kevin’s birthday.  i had a two-hour window of opportunity on monday afternoon to go find him a present.

why didn’t i buy him anything in scotland?  why didn’t i even think about what to get him as we were riding our bikes and sightseeing?  well, we were buying things anyway and it would have been difficult if not impossible to buy him something without him seeing it at some point because we were constantly re-packing and shuffling all the stuff around in our ever-expanding suitcases.

plus somewhere in the back of my mind i figured i’d have plenty of time to think about his birthday once we got home.

i was wrong.  i bought him a civil war book, and amy and jim also got him civil war books, and yesterday afternoon randy called and was going to get him a civil war book.  i said that wouldn’t be a good idea, so he was looking at civil war dvd’s and i looked through kevin’s collection and found a set of six civil war dvds.  unopened.  i said he should look for something else.

here’s kevin looking very happy in spite of the ad-hoc party.  he got a free sombrero when we went out to lunch, and he wore the happy birthday hat over that.

instead of making him a pizza, we ordered out.  it was delicious, i must admit.  i made his birthday cake yesterday morning before my busy day of massages.  i’d found some candles that spelled out “happy birthday” and put them on the cake and we lit the candles but they started to go out before we got out the door with the cake.  amy told me to take the picture and she’d carry the cake but she had to walk through the screened-in porch with the ceiling fan going and she was too short to turn it off…they finally got that under control but the candles were clearly completely crappy because by the time amy got out on the deck the candles were all out.  she started yelling at kevin to CLOSE HIS EYES as we frantically started lighting candles again, but they kept going out as she walked the three steps to the table.

here’s amy and mom trying to get those candles lit.

by the time she set the cake down, they were once again all out.  we tried to light them again but many of the wicks had actually fallen out.

finally kevin took charge, lighting his own candles.

HE HAD TO LIGHT HIS OWN BIRTHDAY CANDLES.  how bad is that?  he did manage to get some of them lit and then quickly blew them out.

i hope his birthday wish comes true.  he probably didn’t even have time to think of a wish, what with the yelling and the melting candles and all the chaos.

whew.

at least the cake was delicious.  he was very enthusiastic about his presents, including the NATIONAL SECRETS dvds that randy bought him.

today things are calm, thank goodness. nothing to plan, no catastrophes at the moment.  kevin is happily setting up the GIANT COMPUTER MONITOR that dad gave him.

ok then, scotland photos very soon,

wednesday, how on earth did it get to be wednesday already,

grace