Thirty-Two

I turned thirty-two last week. We did a few special things to mark the day. The kids and I went to a new park that had a forest behind it. That's one thing that surprised me about Wisconsin; there are little islands of woods all over the place. This one had clearly marked trails and it was lovely and cool.

I handed Peter my phone and told him to take pictures. And the next day my phone died. I don't think there's a connection.

Peter liked taking pictures of trees

and leaves.

I insisted that he take a picture of us

and one of himself.

We found out later that sometimes bears show up in the woods around the Fox Cities, so we may not go hiking again for a while. It was fun though, and no one ran off, so that made the jaunt through the woods that much better.

Then we went to a friend's house for a birthday lunch. Along with delicious food and wonderful company, they stuck a candle into some watermelon and sang Happy Birthday to me. It was perfect.

Bryan surprised me with roses and a pair of cross-trainers to make my gym visits nicer for my feet. We ended the night with a baseball game. What was that? A baseball game sounds like an odd way for me to celebrate my birthday? True. It was an event for the interns at Bryan's work and we got the opportunity to tag along. We stayed a few hours, let the kids run and play on the playground until they were dripping with sweat (which wasn't hard considering how hot it was that day), then went home.

We actually kept celebrating throughout the week. Bryan and I got to have a date on Friday (we discovered a really good Italian food place), we had a family date (our annual trip to see Pixar's latest offering) and a few more gifts arrived via Amazon.

Thanks to all of you that sent me birthday wishes. I loved reading them throughout the day. I was glad that my phone lived long enough to read your birthday texts. It made me realize I need to be better about sending birthday wishes.

It was a good day.

P.S. Bryan worked his tech magic and I have a phone again. He ported my number to his phone which now gets calls for both of our numbers.