Happy Birthday, Z!

Eight years old... I can scarcely believe it.

You don't have to use a car seat anymore after today! I can't believe this picture was taken of you only two years ago... you are growing up so fast.

I'm really proud of you... you are a great reader, an excellent story teller and so much fun to be around. I'm glad you love horses and swimming and skiing and drawing.

Keep up the good work at school. I know pretty soon you will read faster than me and I think your Spanish is already better than mine! I love you! Have a great birthday!

Eight more years and you get your driver's license!

Happy Birthday, Grandma Traylor

We went to Drain, Oregon today to celebrate Krista's Grandma's 85th Birthday. Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Dear Krista... the kids and I wanted to wish you (another) happy birthday. There aren't a lot of birthdays out there that make us as happy as your birthday does. There are many reasons to celebrate you coming into the world. I love you and hope you have a spectacularly good year this year.

Awwwww!

My beautiful wife put up a blog post for my birthday today. Thanks! And thanks to all of you who sent me birthday wishes and so on. I appreciate it.

We went out to lunch at Muchas Gracias. This is my favorite restaurant here in Vancouver. One, it is a Mexican restaurant. Two, it has "authentic" prices (it's a one '$' restaurant). Three, it's open 24 hours a day. Have I ever gone to it in the middle of the night? No. But it gives me a warm feeling of comfort to know that the option is there. Afterwards the kids bought me ice cream. Pralines and cream on a plain cone. Yum!

And, a few notes from "today in history":

1) In 1821, Spain cedes Florida to the U.S. Now that's just weird, because I just got back from Florida yesterday.

2) In 1955 Disneyland opened to the public. Also weird, because I just got back from Orlando yesterday, where we were going to Disney World.

3) David Hasselhoff turns 56 today. Which is weird because (a) it's David Hasselhoff... who knew I shared a birthday with him? and (b) I am 34, which is like "34-56". Somewhere there's a twelve year old kid with a birthday today who completes our numerical connection.

Mikalatos Dance Fever!

Here's a little birthday greeting that Sarah Son sent my way:

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

It's appearing here for a limited time because one of the members of our dance troupe has political aspirations.

The Birthday Unicorn

Z decided that the theme for her birthday party would be "unicorns." The buyers at all the box stores simultaneously decided that unicorns were passe, and suddenly we couldn't find any unicorns anywhere.

So, not to be dissuaded, we enlisted various family members to comb the greater Portland area looking for unicorns. Krista made a unicorn cake. I painted an enormous unicorn on two panels of drywall and we put it up in the house. We did manage to find one unicorn balloon.

You can see the unicorn on the left. Krista had to help with drawing the legs. I'm a little shaky on horse anatomy, but apparently that's pretty much all she drew for years and years. This is one advantage of growing up female. On the other hand, if we needed to draw an enormous space battle, I daresay I would have the upper hand. Anyway, A jumped into the fray as well, helping with the painting (especially the flowers) and the unicorn's eyeball.

Vast numbers of giddy first grade girls soon arrived and swarmed about the house giggling and doing Girl Stuff. A great time was had by all, I think.

In the meantime, we have a giant unicorn diptych in the garage.