Ella Celebrates the Big Five

A couple weeks ago Dad and I drove up to Hancock to hand deliver some birthday gifts for Ella. By Rachel's calculations, it had been seven years since I'd last been up to their house. I found that difficult to believe, but I also trust Rachel's memory better than mine.

We drove up from Chicago and hit a pretty bad storm upon entering the Upper Peninsula. We rolled into Hancock (and over a few curbs) sometime after midnight. Between the late arrival and the allergy medicine that I took, I was out pretty hard until morning. I woke up on the couch in the dim morning to see Ella and Elisabeth both standing before me in hardly-subdued anticipation. When I told me "good morning," Ella was quick to answer me with "Yes! And Happy Birthday!"

The day barreled quickly forward, although not without a little angst, impatience and outright warring between Ella and Elisabeth.

Peter also had a difficult time in picking up on the festive spirit. I walked outside just as Steve stepped away with Dad to look at the garden. Peter had not anticipated this departure and has yet to learn that not every goodbye is necessarily sad.


Finally around 4, Ella's friends began to show up. Quite a few visitors turned out to help her celebrate. Steve and Rachel worked on cooking up Ella's dinner request, which was headlined by grilled sausages and home-made macaroni and cheese. The birthday partiers played in the park across the street. Somehow amongst all the swings, the toddler swing developed a coveted reputation, and the kids did an admiral job of eventually learning how to share the lone toddler swing.


Once the cake and ice cream portion of the party rolled around, Peter had an easier time grasping the mechanics of birthday pleasure.


For Ella, of course, the birthday dinner and cake were mere chores to be dutifully tended on route to the true birthday business. Ella received some special deliveries from Grandma Sandy and Aunt Lisa. Ella also learned with some small protest that sometimes a visit from Uncle David is a gift in its own right.

Buoyed by ice cream, Peter's jolly spirits showed no signs of abating. As birthday toys were being given their inaugural spins, Peter made a triumphant entry wearing oversized rain boots, heartily pleased with himself.


In fact a number of times during the visit, we found Peter exploring a few unguided steps by himself. Although still more efficient with the crawl, Peter is well on his way to putting that behind him.


The next day we made a visit out to Steve and Rachel's pastor's house in the country. Ella and Elisabeth jumped on their trampoline while Steve checked over his bee hives near the woods and prepared a few boxes for harvesting. He and Dad also studied the short electric fence around that hives and debated whether recent damage could have been caused by a hungry bear.


That night we went out for pizza and had a delicious end to a birthday weekend. The next morning Dad and I loaded our things back in the car and headed back to Muskegon.