Three Days Older Than Dirt (again)

April 12 was my 53rd birthday, and Heidi, Katie and I

celebrated it quietly at home on the evening before.

Here are a few pictures of the event.

Yep, 53. No I can't believe it either.

Heidi made me a pineapple upside-down cake.

Yum! It was very good.

The obligatory goofy shot.

Yeah, right...

I don't even remember 35.

Blowing out the candles.

Good thing there were only these two,

I probably couldn't blow out 53 of 'em.

I got an iPod Nano from Heidi. That was

unexpected and really surprised me.

All the kids got together (including Brian, on his mission)

and gave me a blog book. It is a hard-copy book of our Menasco

blog from February 2008 through February 2010.

It also contains some of the kids blogs during the same time.

All the kids wrote letters to me and they all appear in

the beginning of the book.

(Yes, I did cry when I unwrapped it.)

Shelly took countless hours to put it all together,

even stealing all my back-up CD's of my picture library.

She had Katie help her steal some photos for her.

Katie doesn't lie too well, and when confronted by me about

what she was doing, she had to squirm her way out of the ordeal.

Thanks to all you guys for this gift, I will always treasure it.

And thanks especially to Shelly for all the work it took

to put this project together.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Birthday Party, Take II

I teach the younger kids at church again this year.

I am teaching seven-year-olds now and it is the same

class I taught when they were five.

Anyway, I have been teaching for around six years here in

Delaware, and I give my kids a birthday card and chocolate bar

for their birthday. Whenever they ask me how old I am I tell

them that I am 'three days older than dirt.'

So one of the girls named Briley, showed up with

her family and friends and gave me a 'dirt cake'

complete with gummy worms crawling out.

That was surprising and we all had a good time

eating 'dirt' and 'worms' and vanilla ice cream.

That's Briley and me posing for the picture.

Her older sister is behind us.