Birthday, Andy Brown, love moments and friends

Not quite a week ago, I had a birthday.  Number 42 in case anyone is wondering.  Depending on which child you ask, I have either 8 more years or 38 years until I am an old man.  I'll go with the 38. The girls made me some cupcakes which tasted really good.  I'll let you be the judge of the looks:

I think they turned out pretty awesome.  Especially when you realize that they put the tip of the icing bag into the middle of the cupcake first and filled the middle up with icing.  Mmmm.  Icing.

That was on Monday.  On Tuesday I was reading the paper and came across an article on a band that was going to be in town.  I had never heard of them, but I noticed that Andy Brown was opening for them.  He is an artist that Julie and I have really liked ever since we first heard a song of his on the tv show Rookie Blue back in 2011.  I have since bought both his albums on iTunes and they still get played regularly.  Anyway, I texted Julie and told her Andy Brown was going to be here.  'Our Andy Brown?' was her reply.  Yup, our Andy Brown.  She asked around work for a babysitter and there were a couple of teenage daughters, but they were busy.  So Julie told me to go by myself.  It wasn't the same without her there, but he put on a really great show.  He played a little coffee house in town and there were maybe 25 people there.  It was just him and his guitar, some incredible heat (it was really hot in there) and a pint of beer.  I talked to him after the show and told him the story of how we heard of him and both wanted to come but couldn't.  He was a really nice, down to earth guy.  I bought a CD there and he signed it for me.  Yeah, I know I already had the digital album, but you can't sign that.  

To top the week off, we had the girls in DVBS at a church here in town, so I had a couple of hours to myself every day.  I'd be lying if I said it wasn't kind of nice.  But they really enjoyed themselves, even though the first couple of drop-offs were a little rocky with CeCe.  She was super excited to go until we got there and then she glued herself to my leg.  I sat with her the first day while they sang a couple of opening songs.  Then she spied the snack of cookies already set up in an adjacent room.  That looked pretty good to her.  I told her she wouldn't get any unless she stayed by herself and had fun.  She pondered this for about 30 seconds and then told me I could go.  Nothing like a cookie to make things better.

One day they were learning about the ten commandments and made a craft that had them all listed.  Ginny was reading them to me and got to the 'no adultery' one.  She read it and kept going to the 'don't covet' one.  She asked what that meant and I told her.  Then she went back to the adultery one and asked what that meant.  (You'll need a little background info here first.  Every time Julie and I hug or kiss in front of the girls, they chime in with a chorus of 'Love moment!  Love moment!  Love moment!'  and often come over to join in the hug.)  So I said to Ginny, 'You know how me and Mom have love moments?'  She nodded.  I said, 'No adultery means that I only have love moments with Mommy and no one else.'  She was satisfied with that and I heard Julie snickering from the next room.  We both thought it was a pretty good (and funny) explanation.  

Here are a few more pics from the week taken with my birthday present (I got a new camera!):  

Then on Friday we went to Saskatoon for an overnight trip.  (See the previous post for some pics of the pics.)  We saw a couple of friends, the girls swam in the pool, we went to their old school playground and managed to get a hold of some of their friends to come and play for a bit.  It was a good trip.  This evening, we had some more friends from Saskatoon stop in on their way home.  It was really good to see them too.  Sometimes you don't realize how much you miss people until you see them again.  Later.