Valentine's Day

Or is it St. Valentine's Day? Whatever. Anyway, February 14th was fun. Henry had a bunch of friends over for a birthday party. The entertainment consisted of trashing Henry's room and decorating pizzas. This is the first year I neglected to get a picture of Henry's birthday cake. I guess it's a good thing, since I always make it myself and I'm not even close to the Walmart bakery's standards. Henry insisted upon a round strawberry cake with chocolate icing. The cake looked fine until I wrote on it with white icing, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY HENRY." Those well acquainted with me, or those who have at least seen my signature are aware of my atrocious handwriting. I made the HAPPY way too big, so I had to write BIRTHDAY underneath, except I left room to put the "5" candle and the four little candles, with a lopsided HENRY beneath that. There was plenty of white icing left so Ben suggested that I ice around the edges of the cake. I got one white line around the bottom when we both decided that I'd better stop there before things got really ugly. Henry didn't seem to notice how hideous it was. One of these days I'm sure he will want a professionally decorated cake and I'll tell him he can have either a cool present or a cool cake, but not both. Everyone had cake except for one kid who declared that she didn't like strawberry cake. Lucky for her I had some ice cream to go with the cake. Henry got some fun presents including a sticky Spiderman thing that's supposed to crawl down walls. That first day it stuck so well that I thought I peeled off some paint while ripping it off the wall. Then Ben chucked it at the wall in the stairwell, way up high near the ceiling. Henry wanted it back but he was out of luck. To give perspective:



Now you know why I will never repaint the stairwell.

That night we went to the church for a Valentine's dinner thing. We started out with a prayer and a hymn, "Amad A Otros" (that's "Love one another" for me and everyone else who speaks hardly any Spanish). Then all of a sudden the rave music came on, with disco lights and everything. Henry and all the little kids jumped up and started partying. It was a very interesting transition to say the least. After dinner the married women were herded out. Then we were brought back in and standing behind a sheet was a line of men identifiable only by a single foot in an anonymous black sock sticking out beneath the sheet. We were supposed to pick out our respective spouses. It was pretty easy for me, I walked right up to Ben's foot, a big one with the pinky toe about an inch shorter than the rest. I felt the toenail to be certain, as his pinky toenails stick up funny for some reason. After that they played couple's songs according to the husband's knowledge. Ben and I don't really have a song, but he remembered that we danced at our reception to that growing old together song from the Wedding Singer movie (it would have to be a song by Adam Sandler, oh well). So we had to go out and dance to our song in front of everyone, which I'm sure was an amusing sight, what with our huge height difference and visible evidence of the fact that we never dance (I had to remind Ben to turn or something because we were wearing a hole in the carpet). We went home at nine, which is pretty early for a Hispanic party, but the last thing I needed for church the next day was a kid with a sleep deprivation and a sugar hangover. When we got back the Spiderman had fallen down and was covered with carpet lint. He's not so sticky anymore.

Church was a nice experience for me, too. A guy from the branch who just got back from his mission in Japan gave a talk. I had a hard time following it because although he's American and speaks slow enough for me, his Spanish had a funky Japanese cadence to it, but I felt the spirit so it didn't matter.

And now, although Henry doesn't know it yet, today we're going to clean his room! Hahahahaha!