On this our father's birthday

I'll meet you in the streets of Edin, beneath the castle on the hill.
Join me for cakes and coffee at Jenners and then
we'll stroll through the park to catch the exhibit at the museum.
Such a fine day in this perfect city, how strange to discover
your heart beating in a country
so far across the sea. Walk with me, we'll be home by dusk,
time to rest, to settle in the chairs and look
out the tall windows to the most perfect view. Let's order in -
I hear the fish and chips are wonderful.
Thank you again for the trip of a lifetime.
"This is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas.
A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again."
-Alexander McCall Smith

Heaven or Hell Cake

Every year the oldest boy gets a special cake, usually with a theme that has some level of mayhem and carnage in it...there has been the Surrender Earthlings! cake, the Evolution cake (featuring earthquakes and weird critters and major chaos), the Sacrificial Virgin to the Volcano cake (a plastic hula skirted native girl faces her end on top of the volcano), the Alien giant caterpillars coming out of a head to half torso cake of said son, and the Island of Doom where a team of oceanographers escape a sea of sharks and giant squid only to encounter man-eating creatures on the desert island...there usually is a lot of red icing and strawberry pie filling carnage as you can imagine. This year's theme more philosophical as our young man considers his life options. Choose Heaven or choose Hell. Scarier than that - our son looks suspiciously like Justin Bieber and if you press the button on his tummy, he sings.

All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and...

my girls, remembered, missed, Anne and Grace.