In which my husband has a birthday and thinks he is ancient!

Can I just say that I am married to the hottest 27 year old I've ever met?! Of course, yesterday he was the hottest 26 year old I'd ever met, but today he upgraded. :-)

Lamont's birthday today went absolutely nothing like we had planned it. I was planning a huge barbecue bash (do 'barbecue' and 'bash' really go together? no? oh well...) for him with 30 or so of our family and friends -- about half of whom were coming from Spokane, which was awesome of them. I was making endless food, and 2 or 3 friends plus both of our moms were bringing food as well. It was kind of a big deal.

Then we get sick. Oh, how we got sick. There is a vicious viral cold/tummy bug going around; if you've had it (this means you, Holly!), I am so very sorry. I now feel your pain! The girls have been sick for a full week now, and I just kept thinking that *surely* they would be improved enough by today that we could still have the barbecue. I figured we'd have the doors and windows open to minimize germs, and people would spend lots of time outside anyway, and besides, *surely* they would be better by then! But it seemed like they just kept getting worse, and then yesterday I went down as well. With little kids, often you just can't tell quite how sick they are...they don't know how to verbalize it very well yet, and they frequently seem to be improving for a day or so and then relapse, so you find yourself guessing at symptoms and severity. Once I had it, though, I realized that they needed to see the doctor. So off we went to the doctor yesterday afternoon, to find out that all three of them have raging ear infections -- and I am officially the worst mother ever for waiting as long as I did to take them to the doctor. (Yay, happy mother's day to me!)

Lamont and I felt awful talking about postponing the barbecue because SO many people were planning to come, but there just was no way we could do it. On top of all the sickness, the weather forecast said 80% chance of rain all day today, so there went my sunny picture (pun intended!) of everyone hanging out outside. So...postpone we did. *sigh* We spent nearly an hour calling and texting and apologizing, but everyone was so understanding (an extra huge 'thank you' to those of you who had already made the dishes you were bringing, and still didn't bite my head off when I let you know we were postponing!), and when we were done it was a huge sigh of relief to know we could just lay low for the weekend and work on recovering.

All that to say, today was a pretty low key birthday for my man. The girls made him special cards with their handprints on them, and we still had presents and birthday cake (and managed to sing a croaking version of 'happy birthday'!), so Ashley grudgingly allowed that it was an acceptable birthday despite the lack of a party. Lamont's mom came down for a few hours anyway (she is already sick with the same virus we have, so she figured she didn't have to miss his birthday because of that, and we were glad!), and that made the day seem festive. And now he's been chatting away for an hour to his sister in Chicago, whom we miss very much, so that is the cherry on top of a happy, quiet birthday. :-)

And yes, he does think he's old, even though he just turned 27 today! (I can't blame him, I kinda think he's old too...)

Happy birthday, sweetheart! You make 27 look fantastic!