Happy Birthday, PJ!

Again, I'm late with this. (Does 9 months really count as late, or am I now 3 months early? Hmmmm...) Yeah, yeah - I know!

Anyway, we had to postpone and change some dates until a decent contingent of family could be rounded up for one day, but it finally came together and we had a lovely passle of people over to celebrate PJ's transition to the big 3-5. We smoked some excellent ribs and gorged ourselves on yummy food.

The only *ahem* "slip-up" was the cake. I made his favorite chocolate cake with caramel frosting. However delicious that frosting is, it's kind of persnickety. It's quite soft and loose. So I frost the cake and place it in the fridge right away to firm up. An hour later, PJ's sister opens the fridge and asks if I meant to have the cake fall over. *sigh* Sad little cake's 3 layers had slid right off one another, creating a lovely pile nestled amongst the lemon juice and soy sauce. I peeled everything out of the fridge, smushed it back together, and we had cake mush.

The kids were horrified when they saw it. We tried to get pictures of their faces as they came in the house, but couldn't quite capture it. Every one said, "Oh my gosh! What happened?" It was rather funny, after it wasn't.

But we were there together, and that's what matters - right? Happy birthday to my children's favorite person and my rock.

Well hellooooo, there!

Ha! Came back to the ol'blog and noticed that I started this draft back in May. Got as far as the title. Also found a draft post from PJ's birthday back in July - I think I was waiting to add pictures. *sigh*

I don't know what I've been doing lately that has kept me so very busy that I can't be bothered to blog at all, but here are some of the mitigating factors:

• My Kindle Fire. I got it for my birthday and I LOOOOVE it. iPad snobs can knock it all they want, but it does everything I want and I can have it with me all the time. That said, I get on the actual computer far, far less now that I have it. And there's no Blogspot app, and their site is totally not mobile-friendly, so there you go.
• Pictures. I love to take them, love it even more with our new DSLR, but once I've taken the pics, I have to a) find the cord that magically disappears all the time so that I can, b) transfer the pics from the camera to the computer, then c) look through the 857 pictures and sift out the obvious rejects, then d) whittle down the unnecessary/duplicate/not-so-good ones, then e) take the good ones from each event/slice in time/noteworthy experience and whittle those down to just a few great moments, then f) crop/Photoshop/de-redeye/fix, then g) write a post and upload pics. Hmmmmm.......why don't I blog more?
• The Computer. It is and always has been a giant sucker of my time. I get on to do one (or two) specific things and.......suddenly my day is gone. So now I kind of avoid the computer.
• Time. I just can't seem to find enough of it in my day (like most people, I'm sure), so I find myself avoiding known time-suckers even more.

That said, I'm going to try to do better. Promise. Because it's important that I capture these small moments for the family's posterity, to augment my own failing memory, and to share with family and friends.

Just gotta get myself a leeetle better organized to do it. Ha. Hahahaha. We'll see how that goes.