Fun Monday-birthdays

***Breaking news--Mama called this morning and she's bringing cake on Sunday. Sigh. God is good.


Dungareesablaze could not have picked a more timely topic for Fun Monday this week, because my birthday is this Friday. Yea for me! I love a birthday, mostly because there is cake involved. (More on that in a moment.) If anyone asks, I'm 37...at least. Hey! Knock it off, Super Cop. I heard that. Does a big sister ever stop having to whack her brother up the side of the head? Anyway, here were the specific instructions.

For your assignment lets hear about your favorite “Birthday”, it needn’t be your actual birthday just a "birthday" celebration. You can use one you planned, one you attended, one you crashed, just a fun time for this FUN MONDAY’S assignment, and of course you can use one of your very on Birthdays.

I’ve been tapping my thinker and puzzling my puzzler trying to determine the best birthday celebration I’ve ever been a part of. The truth is I’m just not sure. No one in particular stands out. Oh, I had some special birthdays when I was growing up: A puppy at five, a bike at six, the driver’s license at sixteen and an adult beverage at 21. I’ve enjoyed my adult birthdays, too. For the last three years Hubby has taken me to see Jimmy Buffett as a birthday present. That’s been great fun. My family has celebrated big birthdays. We had a special party for Mama J.’s 80th last year. Don’t tell you I told her age. She doesn’t want anyone to know she’s past the big 8-0. And I’m trying to convince Hubby to have a big 100th birthday party next year in the spring because our ages will total..well, 100. Have I mentioned he’s older than me? Just wanted to clarify that in case you were erroneously thinking I was fifty or something. Despite all the fun and frivolity, not a single birthday party stands head and shoulders above the rest. The one thing that does stand out though, is cake.

My love affair with cake is well documented on this blog. To me there is no bad cake, just cake and better cake. One of my favorites is good ol’ white sheet cake, the kind you buy for birthdays. Growing up, no matter what we did or what kind of present we got on our birthdays, one thing was constant. We always had cake. And mother had the interesting habit of taking pictures of us propped up next to our cake. Her photo albums are full of these pictures. See? Me…and a cake.
This is my third birthday. And here’s Super Cop on his first birthday….with his cake.
See the scab on his head? He was a child who always fell forward, never backward. Check out his third birthday. More cake, and note the frosting on his baggy pants.
I cropped this one so you can’t tell, but all of his birthday pictures have Christmas cards in the background. He was born in late December. Handy Man’s birthday is in October, so his birthday cake pictures have pumpkins in them.
Since my birthday falls in the summer and peak bicycle wreck season, I usually have scabbed over knees in my pictures. I searched for one particular picture where I'm holding the cake for my twelfth birthday and both of my knees are banged up something fierce because I decided to try out a hill that was way too steep for my bike. I couldn't find it though. Sifting through old pictures you'll find numerous photos of the Hula-gen's propped up next to a birthday cake. We loved cake, and apparently, I've passed that love onto Teen Angel because she has a hissy fit if we try to have a birthday around here without cake. When she was about five she was mortified to discover late one evening that we were going to celebrate Papa T.'s birthday without a cake. He didn't really want one, but nothing would do but to get a cake, so I trudged to the local Piggly Wiggly and grabbed the only cake sitting in the deli case, a Garfield the Cat cake that looked like it was three days old. Satisfied that the proper birthday celebration resources were at hand, she plopped on her party hat and proceeded to sing Happy Birthday. All was right with the world. And we have never tried to celebrate another birthday around here without a cake. Oh, and just to show that some things never change. My mother will probably show up on my doorstep later this week with a cake...a pink cake with pink frosting...just like she's been making me since I was a kid. And you know what? You could hand me a million dollars for my birthday, but it still wouldn't be quite right without that cake. Maybe we'll skip the picture, though.