The birthdays, now, for real

Whoops, meant to blog about the birthdays (albeit AFTER Harry Potter) and then I forgot to do even that. If you don't already know, my children are possessed of the freakish occurrence of three back-to-back birthdays. They're all separated by three years but their birthdays fall three days in a row. We celebrated them last weekend, commencing with Ainslie, followed by Fionna and then Grady. My mom was visiting and did her usual fantastic job of showering them with unique surprises and, in general, making it a very special occasion. She gifted Grady with a Zorro costume (mask, sword and cape), Ainslie with many, many fancy felt birds to discover (Ainslie's middle name, Einin, means Little Bird in Irish), and Fionna with new clothes, a snow cone maker and a beautiful handmade lamp. Ainslie got a lamp as well. In typical Granny excess, there were more gifts but those were, I think, the highlights.

Our birthday bash was planned as a pool party. The monsoon weather threatened to make it a non-event with some flashy thunder and lightening early in the day but the Weather Goddess took pity on us, and the party was on. Keeping it pretty simple, we followed up swimming with cake and ice cream in the park. I played it dangerous by baking all three cakes myself but I think everyone survived unscathed. ;)

I can't discuss the birthdays without paying homage to all our generous and fun friends who shared the day with us and showered my children with gifts. We got lots and lots of lovely new books and several other very well-chosen toys, not to mention the Shrek shoes (I think Grady thinks they were specially designed for him). Thank you everybody!!!

Edited to add: There's great pictures chronicling the day (thanks to my mom) but I'm not posting them here as I don't think I should put other people's children up on the Internet. If you want to see the pictures, email me and I'll link you to my Shutterfly account.