Day 127: Happy Birthday To Me!

I woke up early in spite of watching The Great British Baking Show and The English Game late into the night. I made myself coffee and had a bowl of tapioca with blackberry syrup, and got caught up on my blog entries! You know I like writing these posts when I do it before everyone wakes up on my birthday. When William woke up we decided to make aebleskivers together, this time with a delicious dash of nutmeg. 

Today was the first day of a week-long "Summer Camp" the kids are doing online. Their school has a FoodCorps member who teaches all the kids about gardening and cooking, and for this summer program she is teaching a one-hour class each day. They made chard salad today, and it made for a delicious lunch. It was funny to watch the kids interacting on Zoom - they've seen me on enough meetings to be familiar with the concept, but this was their first time participating. 

After that was done, I whipped up a tiny carrot cake and cooked it on the porch table in the Instant Pot, using a 7-inch cake pan set on a rack, with a little water in the bottom. I slow-cooked it for an hour and it was perfectly done! It looked like cake! I really didn't know how it would work, but I was pleasantly surprised.

In the afternoon, Taiya and I made sculpey-clay garden tools for her doll, including a watering can, a seed packet, a list of garden tasks, and a trowel. William played with play-doh for a minute, but then wanted to watch Dinotrux while we played with clay. It's a show about dinosaur-ish shaped construction equipment... that talks? He's obsessed. 

Once Jeremy finished with work meetings, we went for a swim. It felt great, though the water is now a tepid 90 degrees. Now that Taiya is able to put her whole head under water, I introduced her to the Moats family tradition of "head-poppers." These are where the adult goes under water, puts the child on their head, then jumps into the air, flinging the child into the air and splashing down. My kids have been too scared of going underwater before for me to introduce them to this tradition, but now we can do head-poppers galore. I did head-poppers with William too, but didn't really fling him so I could set him into the water without getting his face under. He's not quite as advanced as Taiya yet. She loved them.

We headed home and while Jeremy did chores, the kids and I decorated the now-cool carrot cake (see below). Jeremy returned quickly to make dinner: spaghetti and grilled pork steaks. The kids and I set the table extra pretty so we could have a "fancy" dinner. Table cloth, a tissue paper flower as a centerpiece, fancy cups with "wine" in them, and Taiya cut flowers and set them at each person's place. She was inspired by Anne of Avonlea for that extra touch. We got fancy clothes on, they borrowed necklaces from me, and we "talked fancy," in posh accents. After a lovely meal with better-than-usual table manners, we had a "dance" (said in a fancy accent, "dah-nce") in the kitchen. I put on a waltz from the Nutcracker, Jeremy danced with Taiya, and I danced with William. It involved a lot of twirling around in circles. 

A show-stopper. Scrummy!

The evening concluded with me getting to pick our evening show. I chose Born In China, a Disney Nature film that followed different animals - pandas, cranes, monkeys, and some sort of antelope - for a year. It was beautiful, funny, poignant, and interesting. 

All things considered, it was a great birthday. I'm looking forward to seeing what age 38 will bring. I'm guessing it will be a blend of beautiful, funny, poignant, and interesting. And I'm crossing my fingers for pandas.