Happy Birthday darlin'.

Today was Chris's 31st birthday, and although we're having a big pool party Sunday with all the family, today it was just the four of us. I fixed a nice dinner and served it on our fancy china (as Izzy helped me dry and put it away, he again asked if he would get a set when he got married) and we gave him our gifts.

Earlier this week, I told Izzy we were going out to pick out birthday gifts for daddy, and he got super-excited. "I know," he said immediately, "I'll get daddy a new lunchbox! Like PaPa Ray's!!" My dad carries a miniature Igloo cooler to work, and he's put a few stickers on it, which, Izzy insisted, he would do to Daddy's new lunch box too.

We get to the store and they have many tiny little coolers that are very close to what my dad has, but they're just not quite what Izzy had in mind. We go over to the lunchbox aisle, and Izzy is instantly distracted by the Spiderman lunch box he wants. (Which I was going to get for him, but he traded it for a plastic egg clearanced from Easter marked down to 10 cents.) After a lengthy discussion, he agrees to get a cool insulated lunch bag that looks like it's really a paper sack.

We go over a few aisles and he picks out airplane stickers. Okay, first he picked out popcorn stickers, but I finally convinced him that Chris wouldn't really wasn't very keen on popcorn.

But when we were wrapping gifts tonight before Chris got home, the stickers wouldn't stick on the lunchbox. Poor Izzy's face fell, but Supermom came to the rescue with the suggestion that he decorate a plain orange gift bag instead, and he had a blast with that.

Then I told the kids that we'd better hurry and pick up the house before daddy got home, since it was his birthday, and he sure would like to have it clean. Izzy ran to his room and worked a while, then came out and told Sophie, "We need to make everything spotless, because it's daddy's birthday and that will make him so happy." I went and checked, and he really had done a great job cleaning it all up - toys were in the baskets, books on the bookshelf, he'd made his bed, and he'd even put his clothes up. Where, I'll discover later. But he really did a great job.

No matter what kind of cool gifts Chris gets on Sunday, I can't imagine anything could possible thrill him as much as Izzy's pride in showing him his clean bedroom, or his sheer joy at giving Chris what he [Izzy] thought was the perfect gift. Izzy told him, "I got you a new lunch box so you don't have to carry your lunch in the car anymore."

As I just now typed that, it occurred to me that Izzy probably wasn't talking about the plastic grocery bags I usually send Chris's lunch in, which was my original thought, but rather the mess of plastic containers that Chris still hasn't cleaned out of his car from many lunches of the past. I'll find out for sure tomorrow morning. Well, really it's 1 a.m. now, so I'll find out later today, and I'll post a pic too. *UPDATE* Yep, I was right. My son bought his dad a lunchbox because his dad is a very sloppy guy. My son is a very funny kid.

Here's to many more Happy Birthday's, darlin'!!