Of the three people who live in this house, two of us like to party it up and the third is not a party animal.

You’ll never guess who’s who.
Christopher’s birthday was on Thursday. AB and I had many whispered conversations about gifts and plans and whether or not we should buy him balloons from the dollar store. We didn’t buy the balloons but we did sing him a rousing birthday song written and composed by Sesame Lee. “Let’s have a paaarty. It’s your birthday. Let’s have a paaarty! It’s your birthday.” She has a real way with words.

I planned a birthday/family day for us yesterday. We almost had to call it off thanks to a raging headache but I pushed through. We haven’t had a family day in so long and I was afraid if we pushed it back any farther we’d risk the world shutting down again before we did something fun. There aren’t many options for day trips around here so we drove two hours away to a botanical garden. There is a grand total of three trees changing colors in our neighborhood. That’s not acceptable for my northern heart. I miss leaf peeping so much and every minute of the two-hour drive was worth it to see the trees.

The manager of the visitors center told us most of the outdoor gardens were closed because of the virus, but there were a few paths still open. There was a little stone chapel by one of the lakes and a man was inside playing the organ. We could hear it the entire time we walked around the lake and it was lovely.
The butterfly garden was the only indoor garden open. Annabelle so badly wanted to hold a butterfly. A little Boy Scout explained to her how to get one safely and even tried to give her the one he was holding which was very sweet, but she didn’t understand what was happening and the butterfly wasn’t interested so the handover was a slop.
We ended the day with Jason’s Deli, me taking a solo trip into Old Navy and this spectacular photo of my chins.