Lily is NINE!

Our darling daughter is now nine years old. We've had a great birthday weekend, starting with Mexican food at Mi Tierra in Hadley and The Bee Movie on Friday night. The food is good and definitely worth a trip if you are local. Also the service last night was much better than in the past. The movie is pretty good, if you don't mind listening to Jerry Seinfeld for 90 minutes. I fell asleep for awhile (as Mike says, the seats were very comfortable), so I can't quite tell you what happens. But it was amusing and kinda even brings attention to the plight of bees nationwide. It was also preceded by an ad from Burt's Bees about the topic of the great aviary die-off.

Late Friday night Betsy and Tasos arrived from Washington, D.C. She moved there from Athens in the late summer and he moved from Congo by way of Athens about a month ago. We haven't seen them for two years, when they visited us in Brooklyn with his mother and daughter. We all went out for a lovely dinner at Convivium Osteria one evening with Helene and Dimitri and were witness and party to all kinds of "who's picking up the check" machinations. It was really a great evening.

Anyway, they came in and crashed in the family room all snug with the pellet stove fired up. We had pancakes yesterday, at Lily's request, and then walked down to the lake for a nice brisk stroll. We now have a practice of leaving pretzel crumbs on the railing in the bird blind and the chickadees see us coming and swoop down. They seem practically tame, they come so close. This is probably a bad thing and we should stop.

We told stories about the day and night of Lily's birth, naturally, although I haven't told her how they took her from me and wouldn't give her back until my midwife called the pediatrician and he called the baby nurse and yelled at her to give me my damned kid.

We made it back in time to get a quick bite before taking Lily to Build-A-Bear in the Holyoke Mall. Not my or Dave's idea of a great time, a birthday party in a mall. But the high school senior who was our Party Bear was very friendly and enthusiastic and the kids had a great time picking out their animal and their outfit. I was pleasantly surprised to see even the boys having a great time. Really nice boys there. One put his bear in a karate outfit and one in a fireman's.

Then we went down the row of stores to Ben & Jerry's where another nice high school student gave us our pre-ordered ice cream cake. We had remembered plates and napkins and a knife, but we'd forgotten candles, so I'd run across to Spencer Gifts, a raunchy that is still around (!) and of course the only candles they had were the kind that don't blow out. So Lily and her friends blew them out a while until Ren's mom, Peggy, noticed that they were way smoky and we were right below a smoke detector and sprinklers. So we pinched them out. Lots of pics were taken and will be posted eventually.

Then we gathered at home to have pizza. Peggy and her crew came in much later than expected, and it turned out that her car was creamed by some jerk trying to cut across several lanes of traffic. Airbags, cops, kids very upset, Peggy very upset, her minivan totaled, the other driver blaming her--it was all very ugly. She had to call for a ride to our house, and her husband, who she was supposed to pick up on her way, had to find another way home.

We were able to offer pizza and tea and a roaring fire and lots of sympathetic ears.

I slept hard all night, thankfully. Today we will show Betsy and Tasos Northampton. Lily has D&D and then we'll all eat lasagna and garlic bread, one of Lily's favorite meals. It's 23 degrees right now so it's good warming comfort food, too. Yea, Lily!