Yet Another Birthday...

...where my grand plan to make Deb's Best Birthday Cake, devolves into this instead.

But Abby will forgive me when she opens these and this. (We’ve already exhausted Season 1.)

I’m thinking of having a third child, if only so I can dress him or her in this for Halloween.

Why can’t it be October 25 right exactly now?

I always knew Reese was a smart one. (Please note her choice of reading material.)

A good reminder: Who's David and who's Goliath in the battle between book publishers and Amazon?

I've accepted the fact that I will never have handwriting like Marion Deuchars, but now I can at least have her book. (Be sure to play the "How to Draw a Simple Bird" video for your kids.)

How fun is this menu planning? And I'm totally making the lemon-garlic-anchovy potatoes this weekend.

And now a few things from Andy:

One upside to the kids growing up: Abby is one year closer to appreciate this kind of writing.

Can't stop listening to this, and the rest of the family can't stop listening to me listen to it, either.

This could be my Halloween costume this year.

An amazing piece of old-school reporting.

Want to get the kids excited to go play some soccer/take a spelling test/go to a piano/just go out and kick some butt in general? Try this. How fun does that look?

Thank you, New York Times, for showing me that I am doing everything wrong in the kitchen.

Of all the things I love about All Things Must Pass, the album cover is right up there at the top. Here's the obituary of the man who shot it, along with a bunch of other iconic covers.

If The New Yorker would only post their articles for free, I could link here to the latest David Sedaris essay, Memory Laps. But they don't, so I can't. If you get the magazine, though, it's a good one. We read aloud it to the kids, in our best public radio voices -- for real -- and they loved it.

Happy weekend!