We are so happy that Chad’s parent’s visit overlapped with Chad’s birthday. It is so nice to have good family and friends to celebrate. It was tricky to come up with ways to be as nice to Chad as he is to me. Elisa is talking silly–she treats me like a king. I decided I would feed him well and make him work for his present. Hopefully he enjoyed it.

My card had a clue on it. It said, “We’re perfect together.” That’s a line from the Wicked soundtrack. We have a copy of the Wicked CD, so I checked there for the next clue. It wasn’t there. I also tried the Broadway program that we still have from a trip we took 2 years ago. Then I found the second clue in the back of our wedding album where we also had written that quote. Elisa had lots of clever clues that drove me all over the apartment. One that I really liked was, “I love you so much I could cut something off.” The next clue was behind the van Gogh print in our dining room. I had to get a hint from Elisa to find it. Darn it! Later that night I read the clue to Tara, and she immediately said, “Like an ear?!” Darn it again! My mom and I must be on the same wavelength, because no one else got it.

Since Mexican food is practically non-existent here I spent the day making a Mexican feast. It was SO great to taste those flavors again–thanks to John and Renee we received a store of Mexican ingredients! We also had a great chocolate cake that I made from scratch. It turned out so good which is the good news–the bad news is I had to overhaul a recipe because we didn’t have cocoa powder among other things. I pretty much do not know how I made it. Too bad. Elisa also invited some of our friends over to celebrate my birthday. The surprise was fun.