Of birthdays and various things

Well, it has been a long time since I last posted...it is insanely crazy around here, again...so here's a quick catch-up post.

The weather continues to be exceptionally mild (for the most part...we had snowflakes
in the air today)...extending the playground season.

I turned 42 on Nov. 7. A few nights earlier, Starling and I went out to eat in La Crosse (woo-hoo!), the first time we'd done that in years, due to Mudpuppy being so young. I went looking for a fancy-but-not-too-expensive restaurant and thought I found one in the Waterfront. I couldn't get their menus to come up, but another review said they were "reasonable," which turns out to be a relative term...as we found out. Everything was wonderful, from the service to the ambiance to the (truly amazing) food. Starling said she had the best scallops she'd ever tasted, which is saying something for a girl who grew up on the Eastern seaboard, and whose parents now live on the Gulf Coast. But I couldn't help feeling bad about the expense...what would St. Francis say???!!! Yikes. The penultimate "fancy restaurant" moment came when someone other than our server stopped at the table just to brush a few bread crumbs off the white linen tablecloth.

Isn't this just cute? It's a mousse something or other...note the little ice bridge
connecting the two berries...and that is a curl of pure chocolate on top. $9.

My favorite part of my birthday is getting homemade gifts from the kids, along with their kind words. Every year I say the same thing: "Do you know what my best present is? You!" Only this year when I said, "Do you know what my favorite present is?", the older kids said, "Yeah, yeah, us!" And I said, "No! These warm pajamas!" Ha ha, just kidding. The older ones are at that jokey stage. We ended the party with a big group hug.

Mouse and Jaybird with their paper airplanes.

The day of my actual birthday, the kids were off of school. Happy birthday, you get to watch the kids all day! Actually, they were very good -- they entertained themselves most of the day. They rediscovered paper airplanes, and spent hours making them and flying them, both indoors and outdoors.

And finally, before I turn in for the night, here is a bit from the kids' Fall Sharing Night:

Bear with the classroom salamander.

Mouse with an algebraic cube.

Jaybird demonstrating her mastery of terms for three-dimensional geometric objects.
She also demonstrated a word-matching work.

And here is Bear with his favorite work -- maps! Here he is working on placing
city names on a map of the Ukraine.

That's all for now!