Elizabeth's Birthday

Elizabeth timed her birthday right on this year. It's tough having a December birthday--namely because if something comes to mess up your party, it's hard to re-schedule the day. Several years ago, Elizabeth was really sick on her birthday. We re-scheduled, but only three out of the original eight people could come. So I was worried when Evansville started bracing for a storm. It wasn't supposed to come until late Thursday (her birthday) night, so I wasn't worried, but I worried everyone else would be worried. Because that's how it is here in Evansville when the threat of snow strikes (notice I didn't say snow--nope, just the threat of it is enough for us). For her birthday, Elizabeth wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese--not for an actual Chuck E Cheese party (which I would have denied--meany style), but just to have a few friends with her to eat pizza and play games. Her friends came. And this is where the story gets awesome. We got to Chuck E Cheese around 5:00 and I thought maybe they were closed because the parking lot was empty. I knew it was a Thursday, but they're usually pretty packed. We went inside and, lo and behold, we were the only people at Chuck E Cheese. The only people at Chuck E Cheese. Do you have any idea how incredible this is? We ordered our pizza. The kids ran around and we didn't have to watch them at all. The guy dressed as Chuck E Cheese came out and did a dance and threw a bunch of tickets in the air for the kids to get and we were the only stinking kids there to get them (okay, maybe there were two more by this point). It was like we were millionaires and had rented the place out. It's times like that that I love Evansville with it's snow-that-should-happen-at-some-point fears. After a half hour or so another family showed up. They had a cake too. And then one more family--again with a cake. I figured that those parents who had promised a birthday trip to Chuck E Cheese were the only ones dedicated enough to bring their kids their that night. Absolutely nobody seemed to be there just because. And I determined always to eat out on nights that a storm was scheduled to blow in at 11:00 o'clock or so. So everyone had a lot of fun. And then we ate cake at Chuck E Cheese (no, not their nasty stuff--I brought one in).

(Do you see the sheer emptiness here?)

For her birthday, Elizabeth desperately wanted this locket. She has wanted it for probably 6 months now. It seemed an odd choice to me for the price, but that's what we got and she loved it.

And then I let her come to book club with me, which was a really rare treat because I consider my woman and book time to be pretty sacred. She was really really good though and we had a great time.

And then that night it snowed. And they didn't have school on Friday. And then we got a Christmas tree. And then it snowed a lot (for Evansville) and it was so fun.