Happy Birthday Will!

Yesterday was Will's birthday. We started celebrating a week ago when John and Betsy were here for dinner. I served angel food cake for dessert and Will commented that it looked like his birthday cake. So we sang "Happy Birthday" to him and had an early birthday celebration. He has often remarked that our children's birthdays seem to rate a week-long celebration, and I've detected an underlying hint of envy that his birthday is not quite such a big deal as theirs. After the recent gift oversight on my birthday, I felt it important to set an example to our children of the proper way a parent should be treated on the auspicious occasion of their birthday.

So when Will came down to breakfast, this was awaiting him. Notice, three presents before 7:00 AM. (Don't worry, I allowed him to eat more than this.)


When Nick went to his office to volunteer after school, we brought him this. (Sister-in-law Carol was already there with a more relaxing toy for him also.)

I cooked a fabulous dinner of his favorite foods - rib steak, rice pilaf, cauliflower with cheese sauce, shrimp salad, and of course, angel food cake and ice cream for dessert. And two more presents of course. I even refrained from inviting any extra guests to share it because I know that he truly loves only his immediate family.

Then we spent the evening watching one of his DVD gifts with him. He was very appreciative of the special treatment he received, although he seems to suspect I was trying to show him up. Not at all, I'm not that kind of person. I was just showing my love.

And I would have been able to post this earlier but the computer wasn't working. My expertise is limited to turning it off, waiting awhile, and trying again. That didn't work. Will spent some time on it with no success. When Nick got home from church, Will told him it appeared our hard drive was fried and we needed to replace it. Ever confident, Nick says, "Let me take a look at it." He soon re-appeared and announced, "I fixed the computer so I think you owe me $20." Will wants to know how he fixed it. Nick doesn't want to share his secret of success. Will insists. Nick had to admit that he replaced the stick of RAM that he removed last night to see if it would fit one of his computers. Yikes. So the next day, (I'm revising this on Thursday) our school tech person who Nick assists was in the office after school and I asked Nick if her told her what he did to our computer. His version was interesting. "I borrowed a stick of RAM to see if it would fit in one of my computers and then my mom was rushing me cause she wanted me to come down for my dad's birthday dinner so I forgot to put it back. Can you believe my dad spent an hour and a half trying to figure out what was wrong with the computer and he never even checked the hardware?" She said, "Well, Nick, we know there are a lot of people like that out there, so we need to make sure that we always replace any hardware that we might remove from their computers!" I guess there's "them" and there's "us".