Today is Papa's birthday. We usually have to celebrate it for seven days, until the day before my birthday, which we call "the Leave-Taking of the Nativity According to the Flesh of our Lord, Master and Bread-Winner Papa Mark." I took the kids to Kohl's to buy him a hat, and then to the dollar store for gifts from each child. When we go to the Dollar Tree, the kids usually pick up about five things apiece. Then the pile is whittled down to one gift each. Some of the ideas today were: a measuring tape, a pedometer, a rubber squeezy ball, an expandable alligator in an egg, a flashlight, a battery powered hand-held fan, a Pirates of the Caribbean balloon, and a bag of plastic bugs. Ella had her heart set on a whoopy cushion, but we couldn't find one. Papa broke the one he got from her at Christmas last year. Lord knows how. But we settled on two helium balloons, a set of lime-green rubber coasters, an expandable cobra inside an egg, and a large pink eraser that says, "For Big Mistakes".We got the "Thank You Rob" video from Zoe today. It is priceless. It was a playful reinactment of all of the recurring difficulties we had in the filming of the show. Zoe edited it and put it to music. I can't get over how funny it is--and how well made and clever it is. I will post it if I can figure out how.
