I'm mostly recovered from my cold/flu and am just wading through the collateral damage now, so I was actually in pretty good shape for my birthday today. We got up and went to Sweet Baby Ray's for lunch, figuring that the crowd would be small and we'd chance it with the girls. Things went pretty well and would have gone better if the kitchen hadn't been really slow so that the girls ran out of sit-and-wait before we were quite done. But no harm done, I think.

I went down to the studio and transferred Domino Death from DAT to the computer so that I can hand it and the Who Let Him In Here? master to filkertom at Marcon. Then it was off to Home Depot and then to Lowe's, where I finally found the strawberry plants that we'd been looking for to put in our hanging planter. I also found a well-trained double-flowered hibiscus which I bought for daisy_knotwise in the hope of putting a scare into the older, much less well-trained one that we've had for years.

When I got home, I started the fire and we grilled steaks. Gretchen made fried potatoes and the finally seasonal sweet corn that I'd found at the Jewel earlier. Then dessert was a carrot cake which had started as a box mix, but which had been moderately adulterated. It was quite tasty. More adulteration is in the future of this mix, I think. :)

After dinner, we went out and planted the strawberries and hung them from the bracket that I mounted for them. Then Gretchen finished planting the flowers that she'd picked up this week while Katie and Julie alternated between drawing on the driveway with chalk and "helping" Mommy.

Baths are now being had as baths are now a necessity. :)

And a good time was had by all.

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes!