The Flames

Birthday time has come and gone for me this year. I wasn't sure how I felt about it since it was the third year in a row that my honey hasn't been home for it. Luckily though, my my family (mom, dad, and two youngest brothers) were able to be here.
They arrived on Tues evening. We went down to the beach to check it out after I was done working. Just being lazy, chatting, and just happy to have them here. I was still working the next day, but only for my baby (2 m. old), so I was up at my regular time. Around 7:30, my family brought out gifts and sang Happy Birthday to me. It's a family tradition to be sung awake and open gifts first thing in the morning (unfortunately, I can't ever get my act together to continue the tradition with my own two kids). Logan and Aurora brought out the piano, so they could sing to me with some background music. They were too sweet.
Aurora had a dentist appointment to get her teeth cleaned that morning. It went fantastic. The people were so impressed on how well she did for her first time. She drank the water, closed her mouth on the suction tube and even took X-rays. Apparantly not something that is usually done on the first visit. When she fiinished, she say "Thank you for cleaning my teeth". I bet that is not something they hear everyday;) After returning from the dentist, Aurora was ready to make my birthday cake. It was something she wanted to do. She had help from mom, more on that later. Logan was eagarly anticipating the water balloons. That was his thing of what to do for my birthday. We filled up balloons and had a great time chucking them at each other. We had these slingshots, but we made the waterballoons too big, so they just would roll out as we tried to pull them back to launch them. It was quite funny to see the effort made to have them fall out.
That evening we went to Los Rancheros a resteraunt just down the way. I needed my Mexican food. It is actually pretty good. Not as good as anything from New Mexico, Texas, or even Oklahoma, but it's been a while since I've had the "real" stuff that this works just fine for now (Needs more spices). Once at home, the cake was iced (it was german chocolate) and the candles were put on. I thought I had a "3" and a "0", but no "0". I then pulled out the regular candles to put them on. The kids were also going through the drawer and wanting to help with candles. Aurora found a purple "8" and Logan kept out the gree "3". So not only did I have on 30 regular candles, but I also had a 3 and an 8 (Logan's favorite color is green and Aurora insisted on using my favorite color purple). Needless to say the flames were very high! It was a fun birthday and I was so glad my family was here to share it with me. They were able to stay a couple more days and enjoy shopping, the water, and the heat. I was glad they could finally make it to Sunny Florida!