Such a nice pre-birthday. The birthday cards came today. And Dick and Brenda sent flowers, a special surprise. It is a beautiful arrangement of cut flowers with a Happy Birthday balloon. The balloon made me think very happily of Waylon. Anytime a balloon came into the house, he would make a mad dash for it and bit the ribbon holding it and turn that balloon into a free range ballon that floated around the house until it deflated.

Dick took me out to dinner with Jim and Michelle and Bobbie and Bill. We went to a restaurant on south 8th Street called Nonna Maria. It is not very big but serves wonderful Italian/Sicilian food. I had Pasta with Sicilian sauce and sausages. It came with a nice crisp salad and fresh Olive Bread. We had Tomato Crostini before the meal for appetizer and it was so good. A lovely evening with lovely company. Tirimisu for dessert.. Num Num. They have a nice website. www.foodspot.com/nonnamaria. Check it out. It is another place that we could take Dick and Brenda too. A good selection of vegetarian and/or seafood dishes. All prepared fresh while one waits.

I suddenly remembered a little story about Bret when he was in Kindergarten. He was in a small class of about 18 kids. 16 little boys and 2 little girls. He had a teacher called Miss Gammel who was marvelous. She suffered from Hypoglycemia and had 18 little kids swearing to her that they NEVER ate sweets.

The incident that I remember, however, is this. Bret came home from school one day and told me that there had been a fight and one of the boys hit another one twenty two times. Five year olds are really funny. I told Miss Gammel and we both marveled at how he managed to come up with a number so specific.

She was a great teacher and had them doing preliminary reading by the end of the year. She taught them the an e on the end of a word makes the vowel "say its own name." A very clever way of introducing the long sound of the vowel.

Have a nice Sunday. We had sunshine most of the and just enough rain to water the plants on the deck this evening.

Love

Mary