a “did you know” kind of Monday.

Monday morning the kids and I spent nearly an hour driving from shop to shop looking for homemade bread.

For Otto’s birthday lunch he had requested the simplest and sweetest of lunches.  (It’s a birthday tradition in our family – you get to pick all of the meals.)

The perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Homemade jam.  Homemade salted caramel peanut butter made locally and sold at our weekly farmer’s market.  Spread on homemade bread.  With chocolate milk.

I thought about baking the bread myself.  Well.  Actually, I thought of having London bake the bread for us.  But the weekend was full of birthday and trip preparation and Maddox’s first birthday party and I don’t know – a bunch of stuff – and anyway homemade bread just didn’t fit into the lists anywhere.

Did you know that on Monday mornings Upcountry Provisions is closed?  Did you know that the Hungry Drover is also closed on Mondays?  And that Cider House does not carry homemade bread?  And that Flour Haven also believes Monday mornings are for not being open?

Otto also requested a birthday cake that was four layers high and could it possibly please be a chocolate layer first and then a white layer and then chocolate followed by another white layer?  Covered with chocolate icing?

We made the cake.  Layered and frosted.  Of course, realized early in the a.m. that the frosting required powdered sugar, of which our cupboards held none.  Did you know that the internet tells you that you can simulate powdered sugar by adding a teaspoon of corn starch to a cup of sugar and blending it together at a high rate of speed?  Did you also know that the idea only works in theory and that if you actually do such a thing your chocolate frosting will turn out just as you might imagine it would – very very gritty.

We were meeting friends at a creek to eat perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and layer cake.

Did you know what we really did?  We met at a creek and ate gritty cake and imperfect sandwiches.

And there were two snakes in the creek.

(Actually, the meet up was really dreamy.  I mean, the sweetest friends and the kindest passel of kids can conquer any powdered sugar snafu and bread fiasco.)

Oh – and did I mention that for the entire hour we were driving from point one to point eighteen that London was in the back seat precariously holding the four layered sloppily iced tower of a cake that I thought would be wise to already place on the cake pedestal before we got into the car?

It was a fabulous misadventure and we did laugh as we kind of collectively cried too.

And.  We stopped at Spinx and purchased their last two loaves of Sara Lee bread.

Because sometimes that’s what you have to do.

Did you know that Otto thought it was a fantastic birthday celebration despite all the everything?

That’s seven for you.

(And did you know that a wisely cropped photo by Jo can make a moment look as if everything was magical instead of off kilter?)

And did you know that I kind of think off kilter is every bit as magic as perfect?