Birthday Season

It is Birthday Season at our house.

Caroline turned 11 on January 29, celebrating the same birth date as my friend Annie of Quilting Stash podcast fame (and Oprah Winfrey, too). Clearly, creative and influential women are born on this day! We celebrated with a dinner out at Caroline's favorite Chinese restaurant, and last Sunday found us and 10 kids ice skating happily at Snoopy's Home Ice (the ice arena started by Charles Schultz next door to the wonderful Charles Schultz museum).

And I celebrated my birthday on January 31, which was very fun. (I won't tell you my age, but Caroline pointed out that I have lived the same number of years as there are states in the US. How's that for diplomatic?!) On that day, I picked our favorite sushi restaurant for dinner...and continued the celebration by a lovely dinner out at John Ash & Co. on Saturday night with our friends Beth, Laura and Matt, and Ann and Walt. We consumed champagne, wine, and wonderful food and laughed a lot. It was a lovely celebration with good friends.

Now, we are gearing up for Roger's birthday this Saturday, Feb. 9. I will probably grill something special and make Roger's favorite strawberry shortcake for dessert, if I can find decently ripe early strawberries. And we will celebrate his birthday a bit later as well by going to see James Taylor in concert in San Francisco. That'll be a fun evening, I know.

Meanwhile, between celebrations I am plugging away at life stuff. I am onto the quilting stage of a fun snuggle quilt for Sean in his healing process (he is home and doing great, by the way). I've got an original design for an art quilt in the works, too....photos to follow when it's taken shape. (Finally! The fun of creative inspiration!)

And if we don't already know that housework can be harmful to one's health, on Tuesday I managed to wrench my back somehow while bending to pull clothes out of the drier...so I am feeling sore and having to move a bit carefully right now. Today I laid around a lot with the heating pad against my back, reading an engrossing novel of small town life and relationships called "The End of California" by Steve Yarborough. Ah, well...as Beth (who is older than I am, I am quick to point out) said after the ice skating birthday party, at least I managed to skate for the afternoon and didn't break my hip!