Lana's Birthday

Well Lana is 4, we wondered at times if she would make it. Sometimes it seemed as though she had a death wish, but somehow we have managed to keep her alive probably with a lot of help from above. This year in between all the scrapes and bruises she has lost a finger nail because her finger was slammed in Kyle’s door. She almost lost an eye from the swinging chair. She cracked her head on the floor while we were eating dinner at Fazoil’s, which was dubbed the thud heard ‘round the world. Then she split her head open because she was jumping on our bed and fell backward into the nightstand. Not to mention the near misses that I was able to prevent like the locking herself in the dryer…no it wasn’t on. The grabbing of a light candle, luckily I was able to catch it when she realized it was hot. The many times she climbed the kitchen cabinets and almost jumped onto the tile floor. And so on and so on… Every birthday that this child has we will pat ourselves on the back and congratulate each other for helping her survive one more year.

With all that said you might think that Lana’s birthdays would be a huge production, but they aren’t. We like to keep birthday’s pretty low key until they reach the age of eight. Lana’s little party was just family. I thought polka dots would be fun to decorate with and I convinced Lana that it’s what kind of party she wanted. It was such a fun theme I think we will be duplicating it in the future. Weeks before the party I bought some polka dot plates and napkins. Ronnie asked a bakery guy at Sam’s to make a polka dot cake. The day before the party I gathered up everything else polka dotty for the party like, favor bags, wrapping paper, gumballs, ribbon, stuff to make polka dot necklaces, and I even found polka dot packing tape. We ended up using to tape to write HAPPY BIRTHDAY on the wall. The kids made a polka dot table cloth by gluing on paper circles. I put the plates and napkins up out of Lana’s reach somewhere and couldn’t find them for the party; I still to this day have not found them. Lana was really into her birthday this year. All day long she was telling everyone that it was her birthday. She really enjoyed her party; she loved popping bubble wrap and making necklaces. Of course the best part was opening the presents and playing with them.

Remembering

Kyle's school was taking part in a service project for 9/11 and I signed Kyle and myself up. We were to help put up 3000 flags for the healing field today at 6:30am. I know how much Ronnie hates getting up early so I didn't even ask him to go with us on his day off and plus if Lana was there, there could be a lot of flags needing to be retired. So as I left the house this morning I couldn't help but think I bet Ronnie is all snuggled up in bed with a big grin on his face because I am leaving the house before him. That never happens. I must be a horrible wife because I don't get up at 5am and make him breakfast. I have heard one friend say that she felt the need to make her husband breakfast even though all he wanted was instant breakfast, she would get up and stir the glass and then go back to bed I guess. And then there is the friend that not only gets up to make her husband breakfast she also packs his lunch. I would probably get up and make him breakfast if he left the house at 6:30 or 7:00, but he leaves at 5:30 and I'm just not down with that. I think he enjoys his alone time in the morning actually, it's the only time the house is quiet. Anyways, back the service project. So Kyle and I head out to Palm Mortuary on N. Jones. I told him we would get breakfast after we were finished because I didn't want to be late and I wasn't quite sure where I was going. Well I got lost not once, not twice, but three times on my way there. We were only 5 minutes late, which I thought was pretty good considering what it took to get there. We spotted some kids from his school and went over and started helping. The hard work was already done, all the posts were in the ground all we had to do was place a flag pole on the posts. The only hard part for the kids was trying to keep the flags up, that's when being in cub scouts paid off for Kyle. He and I worked as a team one holding all the flags while the other placed them on the posts. There were so many people helping that we finished in no time. Then we walked around making sure all the posts had a flag on them. As we were walking around it was amazing to see American flags everywhere. A breeze would blow and all the flags would wave. I wanted to run down the rows with my arms outstretched touching all the flags with my hands. But I resisted the urge, for one I would probably be out of breath before I reached the end of the aisle and two, I might not set the right tone. Then I asked Kyle if he remembered what happened on 9/11. And to my surprise he thought that it was when we went to war, so I clarified it for him. And then I started remembering my activities that day. I remember that day being so eerie. The night before for Ronnie's birthday we went to a Cake concert in Denver and Kyle was staying with one of Ronnie's co-workers who had two daughters around Kyle's age. Ronnie's friends said it's fine to let him stay the night because we would probably be back around 1:00am. Well after the concert we debated if we should just let him sleep there or pick him up. I felt like we needed to pick him up even though I knew everyone would be asleep. So we picked Kyle up and got him in his own bed then we went to sleep. I always turned to TV to PBS so Kyle could get up and turn the TV on to cartoons. Kyle got up and turned the TV on in the morning then came in and told me, mom there's buildings on fire. I thought maybe Bob the Builder was putting out a fire or something and didn't pay much attention to it. I said oh ok that's nice, hoping to be able to stay in bed a little longer. Then he came back in and wanted me to come see the buildings, so out of bed I rolled. As soon as my eyes focused and I could read the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen, I just sat there with my mouth hanging open for a minute. Then I woke Ronnie up and told him that one of the Twin Towers collapsed, he said they can't collapse. I then made him get out of bed and see if for himself. We sat in amazement. We went into town for lunch later that day to get away from watching it on the TV and everywhere we went people were huddled around TVs. It was like driving around in a ghost town, hardly anyone was out and about. I can remember seeing a crop duster flying around on our way home and being a little frightened. I don't exactly know why, it's not like I really thought someone was going to crash a plane in Windsor, CO, just one of many irrational thoughts people had that day I'm sure. It's now just a weird day where we try to take a moment or two to remember those that lost their lives and we try to not focus on those that caused it.