Our dear Jim will be celebrating his birthday with co-workers on Tuesday, so we had most of our family celebration today. We have had a GREAT time! We started our day with breakfast at Marge's Donut Den - a true breakfast of champions for the birthday boy, who ate an enormous frosted dinosaur cookie, drank a cup of coffee and took a Diet Coke to go. (The rest of us didn't choose anything more nutritionally-minded, either.) Then we were off to the Frederik Meijer Gardens for the "Butterflies are Blooming" exhibit! There were TONS of butterflies this year - I would say probably hundreds more than we saw there last year. There was a moth emerging from its cocoon in the "nursery" that could have covered Aidan's whole face, too. We had a couple of thrills when butterflies landed on the kids' BRIGHT ORANGE shirts.
After the Gardens, we took Jim to Noodles & Company for lunch, where we all enjoyed great quantities of pasta and potstickers. Yum. Then we visited Grandma Margie (who is SO glad to be living in her own house again, now that her leg is better), and also stopped to see Uncle Shawn, Aunt Lori, Jessica & Jake, Kelsey & Jordan. On our way into town to pick up Little Caesar's for dinner, we noticed...
HOUSEMAN'S IS OPEN FOR THE SEASON!!!! Whooo-hooo! So after we had a bit of pizza for dinner, we went back to Houseman's and had our first 2008 ice-cream outing! It was only 47 degrees outside, but what the hey!
More (and pictures) in a while.