Happy 57th Birthday, Papa!

It’s become sort of a tradition that Autumn & I started together to take doughnuts to seminary to celebrate Papa’s birthday.  We got up at 5:45, got dressed, went to the doughnut shop, and got 3 dozen doughnuts (plus an apple fritter for Papa since that’s his favorite & a pink doughnut w/ sprinkles for Autumn).  We waited outside his classroom and as soon as they said they closing prayer we burst into the classroom and announced it’s his birthday today and started singing, “Happy Birthday.”  Then we shared the doughnuts w/ his class.  We got 3 dozen, b/c Mom said she thought there were about 22 kids in his class.  There were only about 10 kids, so we would have had more than plenty w/ just 2 dozen.  Oh, well.  I took the extras to work and shared them.

For his birthday dinner, Dad requested rouladen, rosenkohl, and mashed potatoes w/ gravy.  He covered his whole plate w/ food and then topped the whole entire thing w/ gravy.  Mom is such a good cook!  I had to take a picture of this cake that one of the ladies he home teaches brought over.  It’s a small chocolate cake covered in chocolate frosting.  Then she put kit kats around the outside and topped it w/ mini Reese’s cups and Whoppers.  She also put mini cups around the bottom.  It’s such a great idea and is simple but looks super fancy.

  I can’t believe he’s 57, b/c he sure doesn’t seem that old.  We watched football and flipped over to baseball during the commercials since that is what Dad wanted to do.  Once our tummies had time to digest the great dinner Mom had made, we had homemade banana cream pie for dessert, b/c that’s Dad’s favorite.  Autumn wrote him a card and on the inside I wrote that our birthday present to him was that we gave $57 to the Maxfields, who are serving a mission in the Philippines' right now.  They said they could really use some white church shirts for the young men to wear to church.  It’s too expensive to pay for shipping shirts there, so we just put the $ in their bank account so they can purchase the shirts there.  We figured Papa would want a gift like that, which is helping someone else, b/c he doesn’t need another pair of socks or ties or anything we could have gotten him.

I hope whatever he wished for comes true, b/c he definitely deserves it.  I try to extol some of his incredible virtues each year, but he really is one of a kind and we, as his family, are the luckiest people in the world to have him as a husband/Dad/Papa.

HAPPY 57TH BIRTHDAY, PAPA!!!
WE LOVE YOU!