Birthdays and bruises....thankfully not at the same time

You can tell that I am in the last major build phase of my training before IMCDA because it is taking everything I have not to write this post monosyllabic with bullet points.  Don't judge.

Another post Lacrosse game pic of Max.  And yes before you report me to CPS or tell me that continued bruising will cause permanent damage to his arms please be aware that I have bought him new full arm pads.

Jack had a birthday and finally made it into double digits.  This is a major achievement. All 3 kids managed to survive Matt and my parenting and make it out of single digits.  No guarantees from here on out but so far so good.

Jack requested my friend Terry's famous Oreo ice-cream cake for his birthday cake.  The "foolproof" recipe obviously wasn't tested by this fool before it was given that title and as you would expect I managed to cock it up.  Luckily for me, my kids have a very low level of expectation when it comes to my culinary skills so it still managed to get a thumbs up from Jack. Years of setting the bar very low with my cooking have finally paid off.  Let's just ignore the fact that Terry come over at an opportune moment and volunteered to "finish off" frosting the cake.  It was more like a Lazarus moment for the cake and she managed to ressurect it and breath life back into it.

Speaking of Terry, she knows the way to a 10 year olds heart. The bucket-o-cheese balls. How good can it get.

Luckily for Jack, Matt is in charge of birthday breakfasts and he got the obligatory birthday number pancake.

If you are wondering why just about everything in this post is food related, that is because when you are training for an ironman that's pretty much all you think about. Eating and sleeping in. It's the simple things!