Happy Birthday, Ed!

Today is Ed's birthday! He's.... well, not as young as he once was! But he celebrated the day in fine style anyway.

We made it up to church for the first time in two weeks, and then home for presents and cake. My parents came over and helped with the rousing Birthday Song (None of us are candidates for Carnegie Hall, but greater numbers help disguise our tunelessness. Unless, maybe, they just magnify it? Anyway, we all sing with feeling!)

None of the rest of this has to do with Ed's birthday. But I finished Alan Jacobs's The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography the other day, and it was really excellent. Perhaps especially for big Prayer Book fans, of course!

And last week we got more snow. While I do object to ice, which keeps me off the walking trail, I think the snow is gorgeous.

Travis, posting snow pictures. Because that is Really why we want snow, after all.

Here are Snow Patrick and Snow Sponge Bob.

And last Sunday the Diocese of Western North Carolina youth group offered a "ski day" at a ski place in Maggie Valley. The kids have never skied before, and they wanted to try, so we went. They had a great time!

I stayed inside (with my book), but I spent a good forty minutes hanging out a window trying to get a picture of them coming down the slope. You'd think I'd have gotten lucky at least once and gotten them coming down, but I didn't.

Here they are, though, heading over to the lift.

And here's where I was sure I had them! All these downed skiers and snow boarders, you'd have been sure Travis and Katie would be among them. But I've checked up close, and these are all fallen strangers. So you'll just have to imagine them, swooping gracefully and swiftly down the slope, and we'll pretend that's the way it was!