Another Year Older!

Today has been a great day - starting with Amanda fixing my favorite breakfast for my birthday - love Belgium Waffles and ending with a Church Social with birthday cake. The party was out in the country and as we drove home we had the most fascinating sight. When we moved to Minnesota 29+ years ago there were no fireflies and the first time I saw a firefly was when we drove south into Iowa. We think the spray they used for years to kill the mosquitoes also killed the fireflies, but now they use a different spray that must not effect them and every year we have more fireflies. The sight as we drove down the county roads tonight was like there were twinkling Christmas lights spread out over the fields - a constant twinkling of lights just above the fields creating a very ethereal look. Back to my birthday - besides all the phone calls and cards, Steven and Micah bought me a crepe pan. Finding a crepe pan is not an easy undertaking and on top of the challenge of finding the pan Micah is going to make me a chocolate hazelnut crepe cake - doesn't that sound special. The reason behind the crepe pan goes back to when Kristi was here and I made the "sandwich" which requires cooking two batches of crepes and without a good crepe pan (mine disappeared in our move) it isn't too easy. So having had to do without, Steven and Micah knew just what to get me. One other interesting tidbit for the day. I made a Eastern Mediterranean bean salad for the party tonight which required removing the seeds from 10 tomatoes and chopping them up. I didn't get the tomatoes done before sat with Connett, Gideon, Abby and Peter while Benjamin went to Mayo with Steven and Micah. I dished up a bowl for Steven and Micah to try and Gideon sat down and started eating it. He is an unbelievable eater. Can you imagine a 6 year old eating a mixture of garbanzo beans, black beans, tomatoes, onions, parsley, garlic salt, olive oil and lemon juice. It is good but a 6 year old!