.:.:Happy Birthday to Me:.:.

Since it's my birthday I figured I could get away with a slightly self-indugent post. (hah, like they're not all that already, right?)
So to start with, here's one of my all-time favorite pictures.
This is Max sometime in the summer of 2006. He was really mad at me, I can't remember why, and he made this ridiculous face. I laughed so hard. He just held the face. He held it long enough for me to run and get the camera.

And to take two pictures.

Hah! It still cracks me up. You can see he needed a haircut in this picture too. Seems to be a constant problem at our house....
And for a quick trip back in time, here's a picture of my birthday back in 1985. I was turning 5. Fabulous cake, isn't it?

Please note a very young, very cute Megan peeking into the picture from the right.
The tradition for my birthday was to have a pinata. It was often homemade. Our best friends the Williams would come over in the evening and we'd beat that thing long and hard until it broke. Sometimes the homemade ones would never break and dad would have to take the thing out somewhere and smash it for us.

Here's the one from when I was 5. I love the rainbowness of it. I also love that I'm wearing some sort of long pearl necklace. Awesome.

Here we are in 1988, when I was turning 8. Joel and Megan Williams on the left, and Charlotte's best friend Brittany on the right. I love the high noon effect of the big photographic light we had.

And this is 1992. What do you think we were all saying in this picture? Something loud I'm guessing. We didn't even bother to decorate this pinata, it's just the organic newspaper. Completely functional. I bet it was hard to break too. Joel did a pretty good job breaking them as we got older though, so he always had to go last so he didn't just break it first and bum everybody out.
Oh yeah, please note Murphy's hair in this picture. Does it look familiar?
There's much much more, but that's all we're going to see for now. You'll have to wait for my next birthday for more!!
But I'll leave you with this picture.

Remember the clarinet we saw on the sideboard in the tea party picture? Well here it is in action. Why am I kneeling on the floor to play? Who knows, but I played whenever and wherever I could. Doesn't Charlotte look adorable in this picture? What a cute smile.
Happy January! Aren't we glad that it's February now? And that's all the questions for tonight. Later! We're off to watch Lost. It's a good birthday present.

::A Gem::

I've been meaning to post this for a while. It's an absolute gem that I found a couple of years ago when I developed a couple of rolls of film that were shot on my old point and shoot. In my family we got a camera for our birthdays when we turned 8. It was way cool.
So here's a fabulous tea party.

I'm not sure what the event was here, but it does look fancy. I'm not going to name any names here, in order to protect the innocent, in case they want protection for some reason, but you know who you are! I will say though that I'm on the far left, in case anybody can't tell. And Charlotte (my favorite sister) is the one closest to the camera in the foreground.
Anybody in the picture remember what we were doing? Char? We're certainly all dressed up very fancily--hairbows, dresses, etc. We've got candles lit, we have the quilted placemats out, as well as napkin rings (wow!) and it looks like we're drinking coolaid.
Anyway, looks like fun. I'd do it again tomorrow with all the same old friends if I could!
Can you see my clarinet in the background standing on the hutch (or sideboard or whatever you like to call that piece of furniture). This must've been in 1992 or so, which is when I was teaching myself to play the clarinet. It stood around the house all the time because I liked to pick it up and play it whenever I was in the mood. You know, a swingin' version of twinkle twinkle little star brightens up the day. I should probably try that nowadays.