birthday girls

For Sandi's birthday this year we got a rare sighting of her.

We did see cause to give her a few gifts as well.

She has been wanting an ipad for about a year and a half now and this year asked for donations to that cause.  Sandi has a serious techy side to her. We gave her gift cards to Best Buy and a Starbucks gift card for those sleepy rides to and from Portland.  She has enough geek in her (I say this because Ange has informed me that I have no geek in me) to have a graph on her laptop that she fills in by the box to represent her progress toward her ipad goal. 

All the power to her.  I feel like Best Buy is a place I can only go if I have a cup of coffee to sip on while I wait.  I'd rather go to Home Depot to browse if I'm going to be perfectly honest.   But Best Buy is Sandi's toy store.

Since Ange and Sandi have birthdays so near each other, we make it an annual thing to celebrate together.  There is always good food, happy kids, content adults and plenty of laughter.
And would you take a look at these beautiful girls?

I'm not sure what they were doing, but they were very busy.

Me, in my happy place.

We got this really cool platter at the Common Ground Fair this year.  The bowl is attached to the platter and grooved so you can scrape garlic across it, add some olive oil and pepper and voila!  Delicious.

I failed to get one good picture of the birthday girls together.  Here they are preparing to blow out the candles on their birthday cheesecake while the vultures wait nearby.

Now that summer has turned to fall, darkness descends early and drove us inside despite the beautiful Indian Summer day.  After dessert, the kids donned headlamps to explore the depths of the upstairs.  They look like unwilling miners about to plunge the nether regions of the Earth's core. 

Happy birthday girls...we sure do love and celebrate you!