Birthday Week Wrap-Up

We survived Birthday Season yet again--two nights of camping, two nights of celebrations with relatives, two baseball games and one birthday party with buddies. By Friday afternoon, as we drove toward the pool, I realized we had had pizza every night all week (plus one night camping...more on that below) and there was NO WAY I was going to stop for our usual Al's Pizzas on the way home, which made for three VERY disappointed boys when we went home and made spaghetti instead (leftover ice cream acted as a balm to their psychic wounds).

Camping was GREAT. The weather wasn't quite as cooperative as last year (what can you expect in May in Maine?), and we did get pretty wet Saturday night/Sunday, but we all had a good time playing on the beach, mining for garnets (that would be M), and hiking.

We had the infamous grilled pizza again. This time I made it with my usual Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day variation (half wheat/half white), instead of the dough I used last year out of an old issue of Martha Stewart Living. I think the gluten doesn't develop well enough with the no-knead version, and the pizzas did not hold up well to being placed on a grill, but they were tasty anyway. Next time I'll go back to Martha's version.

I freezer-paper-stenciled these shirts for all the little people (very late Thursday night b/c the shirts didn't arrive until Thursday!)

Arctic tern, cormorant, crab, laughing gull, sand piper, hermit crab and sea star. I was going for animals we might see while we were there, but as it turns out not a lot of tide pool critters look like much in silhouette, so I threw in the sea star.

The only minor disaster was M's cake got totally soaked in the bottom of the cooler, but he was OK with that, since he was getting cake again on his actual birthday. Even in the rain Sunday morning everyone seemed to have a good time (other than E who sat in the car while we loaded our soggy gear in saying, "Next time I not want it to rain." But even he got out of the car and came down to the beach, wishing the waves good-bye until all were drenched and shivery.