Oh, what a weekend it’s been! For starters, a big Happy Birthday to Alan, or HBD as he likes to put it! We celebrated in style! At least for one evening. Friday night… well, I forgot what Friday night was, it was too long ago. Saturday came and he took the kids to karate and himself to his favorite diner. The usual Saturday morning routine. Then I took the kids roller skating and he stayed home watched a movie he’s been dying to see that is 100% not kid appropriate! :)

Lex and his buddy ROCKED the inline skates! He’s better on them than he is on roller skates. (They practice in gym class.)

Eve did pretty well as well. It’s great to see them gaining confidence on wheels. Grandpa Tom, of course, was our inspiration!

Then the party began. Lex went with his friend for a Minecraft lateover, Eve went to her friend’s house for her first ever sleepover, and I went home to join Alan at his surprise party already in progress!

Yep, I managed a surprise party for Alan and he actually liked it!! :) I coordinated with five of his best buds to come over at 5pm. He was watching the last ten minutes, the most exciting ten minutes, of his movie and didn’t even hear them come in the house! Well, I guess he heard but thought it was me and the kids. His friends were walking around, talking, and even began throwing clementines at him before he noticed their presence! I picked up Indian food for everyone on my way home (plus wine and mac&cheese from the Co-op for me!) and got home to find everyone enjoying their chips and drinks and elbow deep in a game of Cards Against Humanity. A game of which I had heard, but had not yet had the pleasure of playing. Oh, my, what a game!

There were tears of laughter all night long!

During the game a mishap occurred, a wine glass was broken (my glass, but not my fault!), and wine splashed down, right onto my phone!! There was a collective gasp and three people lunged for it! I laughed, afterwards, at how everyone reacted because they were all Alan’s co-workers and had heard the ongoing saga of my broken phone just a few weeks ago! Alan took it apart and dried it immediately and FORTUNATELY, it works just fine! He wanted to leave it apart for the night, but I had one kid at a lateover and one kid at a lice sleepover, and I was not ready to be without texting for the evening! :)

I should have taken a picture of the whole crowd. That would have been fun. Oh well. Here’s the tidied-up aftermath though.

We played Cards Against Humanity until Lex came home, then switched to poker. Meanwhile, I start getting texts from Eve’s friend’s mom saying she found a lice nit on her daughter’s head and did I want to leave Eve there or come pick her up. They all wanted her to stay and I REALLY did not want to deal with head lice that night, so I carried on with our carefree evening and left the parental worries for another day.

Sunday. When I picked Eve up she was scratching her head like crazy and I saw a whole village living among her little hair follicles. UGH! I checked Lex and he had them too. I can’t even blame it on her friend. In fact, her friend can probably blame it on Eve. Ugh! So we began the process, again, of delousing the kids and the house. (I just tried to find a post from the last time we did this and apparently I didn’t write one. It was back in November 2015. I guess I was up to my eyeballs in lice shampoo and cranky family — no time for blogging!) Eve was grumpy, but sat patiently for the whole process. Lex practically hyperventilated at the thought of bugs on his head and had the worst ten minutes ever waiting for the shampoo to do it’s job. No fun for anyone! We have a very clean house now though! So, that’s good at least!

He complained, but I was the one doing all the work! No fun for anyone!  I gave him the option of shaving it off, thereby eliminating the the need for tedious delousing.  He quieted right down!  :)

Alan and Grandpa Tom also got a chance to attend a community solar event today and they both came back feeling the Vermont solar love!

What saw us through the weekend — Birthday Cookies!!  Delicious enough to make everything better!  I’d like to say I froze a bunch for later, but truthfully I made a double batch and we finished them in a weekend!  :)

Happy Birthday Alan!

I realize as I come to the end of this post that I have no pictures of the birthday boy himself! Oops! I promise he’s here and as handsome as ever! Like a fine wine, he only improves with age!