Lucky Friday the Thirteenth

Charlie was born on a Friday that happened to fall on the thirteenth of July, which means, popular superstition to the contrary, I will always consider it a lucky day for me.

This year, his birthday was also on a Friday. It was another lucky day, kicking off with french toast requested by and prepared (with some help) by the birthday boy.

Photographic evidence of Charlie's luck comes in the form of the number of fish caught by A. and the boys on an early morning fishing trip to the village dock.

That's a hell of a lot of fish for an hour of fishing: rock bass, blue gill, sunfish, and perch. Some really big ones too.

And here we have the triumphant fisherboys with their catch.

I suggested taking the fish right down to our beach to clean and scale (thereby avoiding fish guts and scales all over the patio right outside the house door), which then turned into cooking the fish on our beach for lunch.

Along with some (literal) grilled cheese I made with pita breads and that the birthday boy refused on the grounds that they weren't "normal" grilled cheese. True, but annoying.

 Poppy even ate some bits of fish.

In this photo, it looks as if it all ended up on her shirt, but I'm pretty sure she swallowed some.

Then we all went to get ice cream.

The boys watched some cartoons when we got home, because they were all tired and needed to be out of the sun for awhile. An hour or so of Transformers perked them right up, though, and they spent some time running around doing . . . stuff. I don't know what, exactly. Building with Lincoln Logs? Picking black caps?

Whatever. They ran around while A. did some mowing.

Charlie helped me make pesto, per his birthday dinner request. His dinner request also included "a fancy dinner" up at the house, instead of the original plan of a beach cookout.

Well! You want a fancy birthday dinner? Blackrock has you covered. (Exhibit A.)

His only specifications for dinner were pasta with pesto, green salad with ranch dressing, and vanilla pudding for dessert instead of cake. Grandma made the pudding, and to the original dinner order I added Italian sausage, peppers and onions, green beans, and sparkling cider in fancy glasses for the boys.

We set the table nicely, including a tablecloth that was just the right size and that the MiL remarked was handmade lace, causing A. to panic and say, "Take it off the table then! It'll get ruined!"

However, since we weren't eating anything particularly staining--i.e., anything with barbecue sauce--we used it anyway and it was fine.

Terrible photo of a lovely meal.

Then we all had pudding, Charlie opened his cards and gifts, he went on a solo canoe ride with A., played some kind of ninja game with his brothers, and had to be dragged to bed to end his fun birthday day.

It was a good day. A fitting celebration for a good kid.