Grateful Friday

this picture has nothing to do with this post, but I love how spring is busting out all over

Adam

I know how lucky I am.

He is smart and funny and interesting and good.  He is a calming influence in my life and my safe harbor.

When I hit the garage door with the van, I texted him.  I told him the door wouldn't close, but the van seemed fine.  He texted back "Then no harm done.  I love you."

No harm done?  Well, a little.  (The whole garage-door-wouldn't-close thing.)

As soon as Adam got home, he helped get dinner on the table because I was in my typical Wednesday night flurry trying to get out the door for YW.  I had to leave early but he recruited our children to help and started working on the garage door.

Then he went to scouts.

After we had all returned home and had read scriptures, etc. and sent the kids to bed (ha! we pretend we're still in charge), Adam and I went to the garage and I "helped" him which mostly meant handing him the wrong tool.

One of the little wheel things (I'm assuming that's the technical term) on the garage door had popped off its track.  Adam just muscled it back into place because he can do things like that (things that need muscles).  He took off one of the metal pieces that was really bent and hammered it back into shape.  We reattached it (mostly him) and chatted about the day and then voila!  The garage door was fixed.

Adam said, "We didn't even need to call your dad."

I said, "Now you're the dad.  Our kids will be calling you."

*****

I'm also grateful today for how loved I felt on my birthday.  I appreciated all the gifts, cards, phone calls, text messages and Facebook greetings.  It's nice to have people.  That's how you feel on days like that.

In honor of our birthdays, Braeden emailed us last Monday a list of things he loved about each of us.  Here were two of my favorites from his list about me.

I love that kid.

Emma made us a cake.  She has never been very interested in baking and hasn't done it much.  She puts her mind to things though.  She gets all in.  She took Mark to the store.  They bought all the ingredients and shooed me out of the kitchen.  After a few minutes, I was called back because they couldn't find the pans.  Every few minutes they needed instructions.  Mark sprayed the pans (at least he said he did) but the cake layers were pretty well stuck inside the pans.  

I was called in.

I did my best to extract the cake.  Two of the three layers came out in pieces.  I said I thought we could salvage them.  

(Mark was dismissed from the kitchen by his sister.)

There were a million and one more questions, but Emma (much like since she was a toddler) didn't really want help.  If I offered more than the specific thing she was asking for, she'd say, impatiently, "I can do it."

I'd back slowly out of the kitchen until the next question.

Finally I sat on a stool at the counter and we chatted.  I was sufficiently out of her way, but there to field questions.

The cake turned out amazingly delicious.

We were pretty triumphant in assembling the broken layers.  It was filled with raspberry jam, bordered by buttercream frosting.  The top frosting was thinned with heated and strained jam to remove the seeds and then Emma whipped cream and piped it on the top.

Divine!

It's been years since someone made me a birthday cake and I think Emma is on the hook from now on.

As for Mark, the sweet banished kitchen helper, he also made me feel loved.  He is ever kind and attendant to me and yesterday was no exception.  At the end of the day he sat by me on the couch.  He lay his red curly head on my shoulder and slipped his arm around me.  "Did you have a good day, Mom?" he asked earnestly.

Yes.

I did.