A Story, Within a Story, Within a Story

May is a big month for us around here. We celebrate three birthdays and Mother’s Day inside a nine day window. All the cake expands our waistlines, and all those presents shrink our bank account.

I call this time of year Festival De Stout’s. When you say it, you must pronounce it with a vague European accent and wave your hands around grandly.

David is the odd man out, because his birthday is in January. We’ve discussed extending Festival De Stout’s, and moving David’s birthday to the 19th of May just to make things neater.

My birthday comes first, on the fifth. May through September (The months when it doesn’t snow here — well, there really are no guarantees, but it’s not supposed to snow.) my favorite place in the world is our beautiful Lake Michigan coastline. So for my birthday, the boys took me to South Haven.

We walked along the beach, and played in the sand.

David even bravely waded up to his thighs in the 49 degree water that’s still chilly from being on ice all winter.

Then we drove up the shore a bit to Holland and made a stop at the Tulip Festival. We took in some Klomping Dancing (not clumping dancing as out-of-towners call it.) West Michigan’s Dutch heritage is as important of an element as our lake.

Five days later we celebrated Wade’s third birthday, on the 10th. Festival De Stouts really began the May Wade was born. He arrived on Mother’s Day, and came home from the hospital on Dave’s birthday, which is today.

I tried to post these pictures Thursday night, but as I was uploading them half my blog suddenly vanished into thin air.

Wade wanted a “Toy Story” cake. He started asking for it back in January when David had his birthday.

If you visited between last Thursday and this morning, you might have noticed a few things on the blog were out-of-place.

Wade was so excited!

I spent a good part of the weekend putting the blog back together. I’ve learned more about the web from fixing broken sites than from anything else.

He tried really hard to blow all the candles out on the first try.

But it took a few more tries.

My little guy is three!

And the blog is back together with a slightly improved look and updated template. 

Of course, yesterday we celebrated Mother’s Day, and tonight Festival De Stout’s comes to a close as we celebrate Dave’s birthday. We’re putting the candles on brownies instead of cake, because Dave doesn’t like cake. And after all the other cake we had in the past few days, none of us want any more.

After Festival de Stout’s ends, I feel like we’ve lived an entire month even though May is only half over.

I think I need another day at the beach.