The Ides of June

I turned 33 last month. No, I know. You are busy, your gift is in the mail, blah blah blah. I kid, of course. I got many lovely birthday messages from people via Facebook. Thank goodness for Facebook when it comes to birthdays. Am I right? I used to have to call my siblings on their birthday and actually talk to them. Now I can just "like" the birthday wish they got from a co-worker and we're good. Ain't technology grand?


The real reason that I mention my birthday is that I really hoped Amy (or really anyone) would do one of those blog posts where they say "Little Gary turned 8 today, so here are 8 great things about Gary!" Where are the 33 great things about me, I ask? So I figured I would write it myself. Here we go:


1. I am really awesome when it comes to...


OK. I am kidding. I did toy with the idea of really doing it and making it sort of tongue in cheek and funny but also extolling my virtues. And then I thought that might be kind of lame for everyone except me. So instead I will report on the month of June.


I did celebrate a birthday. It was great. The day of my actual birthday I was in Las Vegas for a super awesome work meeting full of action plans, and bucketizing and team building and raising our bench strength and such. Fortunately, I have lovely friends living in Vegas and had a pocket of time between the final trust fall and my flight taking off to squeeze in lunch. Enter Ken and Katie Craig, of the Wind Warrior Way Craigs. Their story was that they were going to take me to some awesome french bistro that they love but it doesn't serve lunch on whatever day I was there, so instead they took me to Spanky McSomethingoranothers Breakfast and Hash House or something. I forget the name.


These are the lovely Craigs. Aren't they lovely?

This is what I ate. It involved a tower of waffles with bacon in the batter, fried chicken rosemary, syrup, joy, happiness and love.

You can see Katie's lunch behind mine. Some sort of reasonable veggie burger with goat cheese. That is part of the reason that Katie weighs 1/8th of the amount that I do. Then for dessert we shared this:

I believe the restaurant called it Snickers Bar Bread Pudding. I called it Fulfillment. 

At home we celebrated quickly, because we were leaving the next morning for our annual Utah and Bear Lake trip. There were lovely gifts (Jonah gave me a robot eraser and Noel gave me a head scratcher) and a small cake and some finishing of packing. 

The visit to Utah was grand. We were really there for our trip to Bear Lake but managed to squeeze in a visit to my parent's house for Father's day with EVERY brother and sister and in-law and niece and nephew which hardly ever happens. It was lovely, and apparently, camera free. I have no photographic evidence that this event happened, but it involved carrot cake, me falling off a chair and 1 million people in my Mom and Dad's backyard.

Then, we were off to Bear Lake. It has become an annual tradition and was delightful. Jonah loves the water, and Noel loves to play miniature golf on a real ghetto course at the resort we stay at. 

In fact, the first morning we were there, Noel woke up at 6am and screamed and cried until 10am when the golf course opened because he didn't want to wait. So thereafter, it was a morning tradition. 

We spent most of the days at the lake, and even though the water temperature was approximately 33 degrees, Jonah spent most of his time in it. 

Because the water level was higher than it has been in years past, there was a shallow section of the lake about 10 feet wide. It was much warmer than the lake, but as shallow stagnant water often is, it was funky and murky and probably full of urine. So this is how Jonah spent the day:

Lila spent her days modeling fabulous casual wear and beach apparel and eating sand. 

We did manage to get in a "fishing trip" while we were there where I got bitten by about 147 mosquitoes and a bug the size of a half-dollar attached itself to Lila's cheek. 

The boys got a kick out of it. And Jonah even caught a fish. And I caught malaria. 

We had a ball, as we always do. 

So June ended, full of ides.