A Birthday Evening….

Ernie got lots of birthday greetings—-thanks everybody—including a card from Bianca et. al. (Sasha, Dick and Azure).  He was most impressed.  Sasha, is your daughter wearing a Huey's t-shirt?  You townie you.

and then this one….(the boys were most impressed with the Lego)!

I gave Ernie the choice of course for what he wanted to do the evening of his birthday.  He voted for going out for a drink and then getting Chinese food to take home—-chicken lo mein is one of his favorite comfort foods.  We had a wonderful evening.  When we got home (oh my god do we love our babysitter Hayley—-can't we somehow freeze here at this age so she doesn't leave us?) of course the boys were totally caught up in the Indiana Jones Lego playstation
game (o.k. YOU tell me how I could have NOT bought that for them) so
Ernie and I hung out in the living room getting giggly with youtube.   A couple of glasses of chardonnay and a few pints it's more fun than ever!

I think Ernie finally relaxed—he was a little wound up yesterday.  He and the guys went and got a new drivers' license (well just Ernie—-even though Owen wants one) and then did some shopping at Meijer's.  It drives Ernie CRAZY when people rip the husks off corn on the cob.  My father got him started on this. So yesterday he actually accosted a man doing this in the vegetable department of Meijer's and asked him "why do you do that?"  They talked a few minutes—-Ernie swears he was very polite—-and after they moved on Owen curiously asked him if he knew that man.  I sort of wish I'd been there but then again I'm glad I wasn't.  Anyway a couple of drinks, some bad David Lee Roth videos and chicken lo mein gave us a nice evening.

Then of course the tornado sirens went off…..  the boys practically levitated shouting "WE HAVE TO GO THE BASEMENT" and began gathering things near and dear to their hearts.  Leo scurried to the basement muttering, "I hope it's an F1  not an F3….that would be bad."  So there we sat in our wet basement (the water had receded to just sloppy wetness) with the boys eyes getting huge with every lightening strike or clap of thunder.  I made the mistake of saying that I hoped my mother was o.k.  Owen got very upset and wailed "how is grandma going to get to the basement?"  I assured him that she would be o.k.—-that she'd go to the bathroom in their house because it's in the middle of the house and doesn't have any windows so that led to a long discussion of course.  Listened to Ed Keiser on a crackly radio and Owen slowly fell asleep with his head on a huge stuffed Nipper dog that had been consigned to the basement.  Leo didn't want to go back up but once he started to doze off I convinced him it was o.k.  Going upstairs woke them up a bit but of course they both wanted to sleep with us so Leo made up a little bed on the floor next to our bed.  It was quite nice having everyone so close although I kept worrying about Ernie stepping on Leo's chest if he got up….  We all read books and then turned out the light and watched the lightening…or Leo and I did as Owen was fast asleep.  We watched the street begin to flood again and then drifted off to sleep.