A Day of Birthday Proportions

It's Elena's birthday, and what else is there for a "three-year-olds" to do but to visit all her favorite places. This means, first of all, a visit to Whole Foods (we love the samples!) Not just a Whole Foods, though, but the Whole Foods. (Well, if you're getting historical, the Whole Foods is just down the street and is now a used record shop, but this one is still the flagship store.) We tasted a hot guacamole, some smoked salmon, vanilla soy milk, and spicy mixed nut bark (who knew chocolate could burn?), and saw piles of pumpkins (for carving... for pies...), breads and cheeses of all sorts, and birds walking on the sidewalks. Joseph tried to catch them.




After that, we headed to the brand new second location of Hey Cupcake!, conveniently located a few blocks from our local grocery store. We'd been saving our free cupcake coupon for just this occasion, and Elena picked a brown cupcake with white (actually colored pink) on top, and whipped cream inside. We told the cupcake guys it was her birthday and they put a candle on it for her to blow out.


Hey Cupcake! also happens to be two spaces away from a firehouse (with the local eclectic yarn store wedged in between), and their truck was parked outside. I asked Elena if she wanted to look at the truck, and we carefully stood out of the way, just in case the bell rang. Someone saw us, though, and Liz the Firelady came out to say hi and ask if we wanted to see the truck up close. As usual (well, as with the only two other firetrucks we've played on) Elena would only agree to sit in it if Mommy was right there with her. We tapped a hat, though, and looked at the boots, and took a picture. Everyone got badge stickers, we saw a really old firetruck in the garage (but didn't get to investigate), and the firelady was super nice.


Once we got home, it was nap time for Joseph, and Elena got to do a special craft. Since we'd seen so many pumpkins at the "food store" we decided to make paper pumpkins at home. I cut them out, and Elena colored faces and glued on stems and leaves. The mouths are more scribbley than usual because "pumpkin mouths go up and down."


I don't have the proofs yet, but we also went in to Daddy's picture store and got new pictures of Elena for the mantle/shelf and the front hall. For dinner, we had "macky-roni cheese in the oven" and candles on a Happy Birthday brownie.



She opened presents all by herself, including the card. She loves the book, Mom, and will discover the wonders of the dress soon, I'm sure.


All this birthday stuff has been really fun. She's been looking forward to her birthday ever since Joseph's, and the payoff has been her excitement these last few days. Maybe we can get her interested in mine...