Marisa turned 8 on Thursday.

As always, the birthday girl/boy gets to plan their special day. Marisa wanted eggs, sausage and toast for breakfast, grilled potatoes and chicken for lunch and out for pizza at dinner time. She would be inviting a friend overnight and we would bowl after pizza and the next day spend the day swimming.

It pretty much worked out the way she wanted.

I mean...if you are 8, do you really notice those minor wrenches thrown at you?

Like postponing the homemade grilled lunch because of a water-mane break that left us with no water over the hours around lunch? Or having to drive 30 minutes to a different pizza place and bowling alley because the one you wanted to go to was closed? And I wonder if the kids were at all frightened at the pizza place when it became evident to us grown ups that we were eating in an establishment that employed a group of teenagers more interested in talking about jail and getting food and drinks to their gangster-looking boyfriends who made the joint their hangout.
And I am FAIRLY certain that nobody but Fred and I nearly lost our cookies when we walked out of the resturaunt and were nearly run over by what surely must have been the rest of the gang. And I am confident that only Fred and myself realized that we smelled like a smokey bar when we left the bowling alley.

At least the swimming part of the plan worked out beautifully.

Almost, anyway.

After a full afternoon at the pool...everybody was super tired and super cranky. Marisa's friend cried because she missed her mom. Everybody was hungry. Everybody was mad. And when Our friend's dad came to pick her up....the poor girl practically had to be carried out to him as she was so tired and her eyes were so red from all the chlorine...she could barely open them. She looked sort of like she was heavily medicated. Which brings me to the point of wondering....does she need any medicine now for that sunburn we sent her home with?

I really hope she still wants to be our friend. And that her parents will let her.

Well....I guess the simple and beautiful birthday plan didn't go off quite as beautifully or simply as originally thought.

But the simply beautiful 8-year-old didn't seem to mind.

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