Streams, Birthdays, and Snowcones

Yesterday, we started drying out, somewhat. There is still much standing water in places and some poor people have evacuated their houses because of flood water. We are fortunate not to have experienced any major flooding at our house. Official count for rain in our area was 19-20 inches.
This is a picture from yesterday. You can see our driveway again, as it was covered with water, as shown in Fay, Fay, Go Away . Dom and the boys spent yesterday doing yard work. Lots of sticks and leaves everywhere. They did a great job cleaning up.

Our footbridge now has an actual stream under it. :) It is normally dry, so this kind of nice. I did not help with the clean up, being my birthday, I didn't do much of anything. I talked on the phone a lot to family (Mom & Alisha) and friends (Jenny & Tammy) calling to wish me a happy birthday.

Here is Dom slaving away at making me dinner. A week or so ago, he asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I said, "do I have a choice," knowing that money was tight. He said, "no, but I thought it sounded good." LOL! So I told him just to make me dinner. And breakfast in bed. And lunch. And.....

So he did make me breakfast in bed. I was already awake and waiting for it, so there was no surprise. But it was still nice. The kids came in and gave me their lovely home-made cards. Later Dom ran into town to buy me a cake. By the time he came back, he asked me what I wanted for lunch, but I had already eaten.

And here is me with my very special birthday dinner. Dom had the kids set the table and I sat down to an empty round plate. Dom whisked that one away and sat down this platter full of food. This is what I had on my plate: a t-bone steak (my favorite cut); kabobs with scallops, potatoes, onions; bacon wrapped scallops; corn on the cob; sauteed asparagus; crab legs and cold shrimp. I was the only one with a t-bone and crab legs which made it special just for me. You'll be happy to know that I could not eat all that food in one sitting. Leftovers always make me happy, because then I get to enjoy a good meal twice.

Dom bought a chocolate ice cream cake. He put the candles on with one on the side, you may be able to see it. I thought that would be tricky to blow out with one breath, but I did it. The only thing is that I forgot to make a wish before I blew out my candles! ;(

Today was the scheduled play date for Fun With Water at my house. I shouldn't have titled it that because I think Fay got the wrong idea! I wasn't sure if anyone would come today, but I welcomed anyone who wanted to get out, to come on by. We had one family come. They are new to this area, so it was nice to get some one on one time getting to know them. The sun actually came out and the kids were able to go swimming (we are still getting occasional showers from Fay). I forgot to take any pictures and I forgot to offer them snowcones, until it was too late and they were leaving. :(

But here is a picture of Alex, Anna, Ethan and Quinn enjoying snowcones after lunch. This snowcone machine is the one piece of equipment we have left from our concession stand/restaurant days. Dom loves his snowcones, so we couldn't get rid of this! You don't even want to know the recipe to make snowcone syrup. Not that it's bad, as in nasty, you just wouldn't believe the amount of sugar in it!!!!! It's what keeps dentists in business.