August 27 is the right day but only 2/5 of us will be around then so we celebrated early. As usual, we made cookies instead of cake, an extra large one frosted by the honoree. My son’s approach to this task is applying as much frosting as he can, as you can see below. We served him his favorite homemade Parmesan chicken fingers for dinner.

Our family rule is you can’t have a cell phone until you are 16, and this techy kid REALLY wanted an iPhone. We’d paid for a phone for his older sister without a data plan, so we settled that he’ll be paying for his own data plan. Getting the phone wasn’t as easy as we’d expected, since we learned they are in such demand, it is hard to get your hands on one. After long deliberation and comparing service plans, I upgraded and got one too, since it is cheaper with more than one user. It will be very helpful for my work to be able to answer my email remotely. What a world this opens up!