Happy (almost) Birthday Canada!

Since in our house, birthdays must always be marked by cake, I am in the process of making an angel food cake with strawberry cream filling, the colours a nod to our lovely, lovely flag. My mother-in-law made this particular cake for me eleven years ago, and it instantly became my favourite dessert. All other desserts can just go home, for all I care. We don’t need you here.

We’re getting into our summer groove. The first few days were a bit strained, as they can be when your kids have spent a month with non-stop exciting end-of-school events and suddenly it’s the end of school and the days are just waiting to be filled. We seem to have gotten over the hump, as it were, and have been having the kind of days one just loves to write about. Trips to the playground! Picnics! Bike riding! A sunny afternoon at the wading pool! It feels all wholesome, and happy, and like I could do this for the rest of my life. Of course, now that I’ve written it, I can almost see the other shoe dropping, so to speak.

Never mind. The weather has been sunny, warm, and dry, my very favourite weather. It’s my happy weather. I love this weather so much I want to take it for a ride in my Chevy Camaro, park on a hill overlooking the city, slip in an eight-track of Bob Seger’s Night Moves, and get it pregnant. Then, because I sincerely do love and respect this weather, I will marry it and help raise our little weather babies, and we will grow old together, sipping our glasses of iced tea and rocking in gliders on our veranda, watching our little weather grandbabies play on the grass.

Wow. That last sentence is what happens when you enjoy a Smirnoff cooler whilst blogging.

Oh! But there is other exciting news in our house, in addition to my peculiar weather fantasies. Mark lost one of his front teeth, and the result is quite hilarious. I kind of love when kids get those awkward dental situations, a mix of giant teeth and giant gaps and teensy baby teeth. His tooth was crazily loose, and I told him about kids in my day getting their teeth pulled via the string-on-the-doorknob method. He and Jake were horrified, and asked if that had happened to me. No, I replied, I would have cried way too much. Drama queen would have been a polite way to describe the kind of kid I was. I promised Mark I wouldn’t ever try to pull his tooth, a promise I somewhat regretted when I watched him suffer through dinner. Later he actually bumped his mouth accidentally, and cried and cried as he watched the blood drip from his mouth. Just do it, we encouraged him, pull it out! And he reached in and actually pulled out his own tooth! My big big kid. I smile every time I see his giant, gappy grin.