Yeah, birthday!!!

The hour is late, and we 41-year-olds need our beauty sleep, so I'll see if I can wrap this up quickly. We had a great birthday dinner last night with Suzi and Bill, and it was notable for the fact that both boys sat at the table for the entire meal. Perfect. Then we retired back to the house for Suzi and Luke's special birthday cake creation, which Zach had already declared as "his" birthday cake. "My birthday is coming up!" he kept reminding us.

Today was a wild and wacky day, with a morning playdate with some old friends, followed by an ice cream social for Luke's new class, which then evolved into a second playdate at our house with some new friends from Luke's kindergarten class. (It turns out that among the five- and six-year-old set, all you have to do is say the word "Lego" and you can be fast friends.) When we finally said goodbye to our guests, and cleaned up the damage, we went out to a little Mexican restaurant on the beach and we had Mexican food and margaritas while watching the sun set beside us. Not a bad day at all.

Speaking of Legos, and Luke... He seems to have become dissatisfied with the pace at which people are buying him new Lego sets, so he took matters in his own hands this weekend. At some point during a very hot day at the beach, he and his friend decided to start selling the cold drinks we had sitting on ice in our jumbo cooler. ("Cold drinks for a dollar!") They were delighted when they both made $2, but Luke still wasn't satisfied. He insisted on continuing the sale in the driveway when we got home, and he made an extra $7 to bring the total take to $9. Mostly he made the money because he was so completely committed to the cause - sitting out in the broiling sun, not interested in taking a break, and corralling anyone who happened to be walking in the vicinity ("Excuse me - Would you like to buy a cold drink?") On Sunday he was chomping at the bit to "set up his sale" again, and even though there weren't that many drinks or that much ice left, he somehow charmed passers-by into spending another $13, bringing his total take to $22. That, my friends, buys a fairly decent Lego set. Problem is, now I have to explain to him that he can't just sell stuff out of our driveway every weekend.

Luke lost another tooth yesterday morning, which means that he is headed off to kindergarten tomorrow with three teeth missing. Now he has a totally sweet gap-toothed grin. I wonder if he'll charm his teacher as much as he's charmed the rest of us?