How to Spend a Successful Day Celebrating Best-Beloveds' Birthdays

• wake up early
• strike out together for adventure, forget the camera (oops)
• hike up Rock Canyon
• laugh at each other while drinking from a violently spastic water fountain and nearly drowning
• practice being in the moment
• pet a stranger's Golden Doodle puppy, make two new friends: one human (Tamara), one canine (Finnegan)
• make a memorial stop at Provo Bakery for my dad's favorite treat (raisin-filled cookies), sing him "Happy Birthday" in the car under a shade tree, make a wish he might make, and blow out a flickering "finger candle" for him
• shop at Good Earth for eggs from happy Nephi chickens
• buy 49.25 lbs. of red-banded organic bananas, cause an audible stir among the checkers and customers (we've got a big freezer, okay?)
• come home, make banana pancakes with cardamom (YUM—I finally found my pancake-making niche)
• flop, nap, shower
• talk briefly about perfume-making with Becca but be no help at all
• think about our niece, E., who turns 12 today at camp
• write a birthday love note to Rob
• wait for Rob to take a time-out for a friendly visitor
• surprise Rob with a subscription to the TLS
• compare notes about the cost of this gift
• dig anxiously through the garbage and find the unbelievably discounted offer on TLS that Rob secretly hoarded for ages and finally threw out last week
• cancel the online gift subscription immediately, fill out a happily modest check, and mail it postage pre-paid at the P.O. (how wonderful that snail mail still rules over some parts of our existence)
• marvel at how two years' worth of reading can magically turn into six with the right math skills and the right subscription offer
• watch this repeatedly: 

• work on more adoption papers
• eat at Fusion and lick our plates
• shop for backpacks
• reject Emergency Essentials' offerings
• dawdle in REI
• feel grateful and gooey while the nice sales guy who helps us fit packs tells us the story of his hero dad's Army Air Corps ring (it looks so at home there on that proud son's hand)
• decide on the red 40 for Rob, and the chartreuse 30 for me
• visit Tribal Headquarters, collect birthday gifts and family hugs and a father's blessing from Rob's very sick but very wonderful dad (whose own birthday was yesterday—three great men in a row!)
• eat exquisite salads made by Gary (hand-pressed raspberry dressing, really?)
• come home with my chakras realigned and stuck all over with medical tape and magnets, thanks to  my loving, acupressuring sister-in-law, Jeanne
• write
• sleep