Today is Lisa's birthday or as she calls it "The Most Important Celebration of the Year." Seriously. She has petitioned it to become a Federal holiday.
This weekend, we had a larger birthday celebration because of two reasons: 1) It was her 40th birthday and 2) I still have a few more years before I turn 40 (That's right...Lisa's a cougar. Groooowl.). On Saturday, we had a luncheon with a group of friends at a nearby restaurant. Then today it was just hanging out with the family. And tomorrow her classroom is throwing her a party. And then next weekend is the one week reunion of her 40th birthday back at the restaurant.
Since it was a special birthday and "The Most Important Celebration of the Year", I knew I had to have better presents than in the past. Not to say that my past presents have been bad. I thought last year's present of Midol and tampons was thoughtful and practical.
This year, I bought Lisa a nice Coach shoulder bag and took the kids to Color Me Mine to make some picture frames. I wasn't too sure how the frames were going to turn out, but the kids had a good time painting. The kids told me what colors they wanted to paint the frame, and then they went at it.
Emma was very careful to make sure the entire frame was painted with color. She sat down and was very focused on what she was doing. Here is what she did:
As for Andrew, he also showed focus...for about 3 minutes. At first, he had fun painting, but as soon as he started to mix all of his colors to create a festive black-toned frame, I decided Andrew was done; I didn't want the frame to end up looking like a tombstone.
The other concern I had about the picture frames is that I was afraid the kids were going to blab what they did to Lisa. So I did not tell the kids why we were painting the picture frames and did not talk about it when we got home. I did hear Andrew say to Lisa, "Paaaain! We paaaain today!" But then I told Lisa that Andrew was just trying to tell her we had pizza for lunch -- which was true.
So imagine my joy when I was able to keep this secret from Lisa for two full weeks! Imagine my joy when Lisa opened the gifts and was surprised! And imagine my joy when after opening the gifts Lisa finally told me that the day we went to Color Me Mine, Emma told her, "Today we went to paint picture frames at a store with Auntie Michelle!"
Yup...imagine my joy.
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