birthdays

We're big on them: family birthdays. We travel for them -- or some date close to them, we wrap presents in colorful paper, we sing and blow out candles. (Of course, when I say *we,* you surely will have guessed that I exclude Ed from that configuration. Though he is, these days, so content to observe from the sidelines.)

Today is the day we celebrate my little girl's birthday. And she is sweet enough to drive up from Chicago with her fiancee for the occasion.

So that sets the day. Ed and I scrub the farmhouse. Breakfast, therefore, is very late.






And then the children come...

And for once, Isis doesn't run away. In fact, he takes to drinking water from anyone who places a glass on a table. (I wash a lot of glasses this evening.)






We go to Brasserie V for dinner. No reservations there, so we spend some time at the bar waiting for a table. Here they are -- my girls and their guys. I tell Ed that this is the most heavenly of moments.






But the evening really belongs to my littlest one. It's her celebration!






Out comes the cake piece, the candle... She hushes us as we break out into song perhaps a bit too loudly. She's onto her thirtieth year. An important year, a great year.

Happy birthday to you!






And the kids stay on in town and Ed and I retreat back to the farmhouse, because really, we succumb to Cinderella dust far earlier than they do. And that, perhaps, is not a bad thing.