Ninth Birthday and the Easter of the Chocolate Chicken

Sometimes life gets so busy you can't actually record it: living it takes up too much time and space. That's what it's been like lately. Since I've been blogging on the Middle East at the MEI Editor's Blog, I get tired of looking at the Blogger interface, and haven't been doing a good job of recording our family adventures.

Before I say anything about the weekend just ending (a fairly routine one), I'm just beginning to blog last weekend, which marked both Sarah's ninth birthday (Friday, April 10) and Easter (Sunday if you couldn't figure that out on your own). Her April 10 birthday means it always falls close to Easter, but this was the closest yet.

And the German chocolate chicken, shown in the photo, is part of the story.

First of all, Sarah was off school on Friday for Good Friday. I work from home Fridays anyway, while Tam had to work. Since her birthday fell on Good Friday and the following weekend was Easter, we figured it was not the time to have a party for friends. She wants a sleepover anyway, so we'll do that another weekend when Easter doesn't intrude.

So Friday was a Daddy-daughter day, which we used to have regularly before she started preschool, but which are less frequent these days.

First we had lunch at our local La Madeleine. The days when the lunch request was aways MacDonalds are past. Of course it's more expensive, but the food's better.

Friday also coincided with the opening of the Hannah Montana movie. So we took in a matinee. Not surprisingly, there were virtually no males there except a few other Dads with daughters. It actually could have been worse, and Sarah enjoyed it.

We then headed for our local outlet of German Gourmet, which Sarah quite rightly thought would be the best place to pick out a chocolate cake for her birthday. We chose a Black Forest Cake — $25, but you're only nine once — and as we were waiting in line to pay for it, she spotted the Easter chicken shown above. Since everyplace else has chocolate Easter rabbits, she thought the chicken (which sits on chocolate Easter eggs) was hilarious. (I think it's just a cultural difference, and the German shop had rabbits too.) And yes, I bought the chicken.

That evening we had a small party for the three of us, then she played with a friend for a while. We gave Sarah a few gifts, though several of her birthday gifts had already been given ahead of time. Also, by prior arrangement Sarah began getting a regular allowance on her birthday.

On Saturday, we ran errands mostly, but also, since the real birthday present sometime in the upcoming months is going to be a dog, we stopped at the local Petco, which has dogs for adoption on Saturdays. While we're not ready yet — we need to get more fencing in, and get the house dogproofed — we're actively educating ourselves to give Sarah the sense this is really going to happen. The rescue group had a number of dogs there, giving Sarah plenty of interaction time (and she's very good with dogs, and always asks neighborhood dog walkers if she can pet them). She particularly liked Maggie (link will only work until Maggie is adopted), though she's also fond of corgis and some other breeds. Saturday night we went to Easter Vigil for the first time with Sarah, but it proved a bit too long for her: dozens of people were being baptized. Still, she made it through.

On Sunday we joined our old friends Cynthia Lancer-Barnes and her son Jake from Bermuda, with Cynthia's mother, aunt and another old friend, for a long brunch (that ran till about 5 pm) at Meiwah restaurant in Friendship Heights, MD (just over the DC line). So an Easter with friends, wrapping up a good weekend.

Though Sarah knows now that the Easter Bunny is us, she insisted we hide plastic eggs fullo of candy anyway, but we didn't get around to it until we got home at nearly dusk, so we did it inside.

I'll try to come back later and talk about this weekend, though there's less to report.

There are videos of the birthday cake and Easter at our YouTube site.

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