Pi Day Pie Winner!

Boy am I packed full of pie.

Virtual pie, that is. Virtual Pi Day pie!

You guys didn’t make it easy, which is what I like about you.

If you’re here and you don’t know what Pi Day is, I’m not sure how you manage to leave the house in the morning because it’s one of the only reasons people come here. Go to the blog Learn More Every Day. It’s like two aspirin for your ignorance. (I’m going there a lot myself, but not for Pi Day).

Honorable Mentions:

To Relatively Awesome for the awesome revelation that you can put cheese right into the crust! Who knew? Greg made an apple pie with gruyere crust and I want to eat it so bad! I can’t believe I never thought of it.

To Rick Miller, for this:

Another Honorable Mention goes to Sarah Lynn’s Sweets for the Pi cake she made for her Brother-in-Law, check it out:

And now for the winner.

Wait, did you know that there is such a thing as cherry Three Musketeers? I found this out from ThoughtsAppear, because that’s what she made her Pi out of.

And now for the winner.

Umm… how did that get in here?

And now for the winner:

Rachel’s Table: Venison Shepard’s Pie with Thyme Pi.

Because I totally wasn’t expecting that. And also because I believe the best place for deer is in a pie.

Rachel, your unique use of thyme and your most appropriate use of venison has earned you PooPourri!

I must report that I was really torn between the above Rachel’s Pie and GoJulesGo’s Chocolate Chip Pie with Chocolate Bacon Pi.

Really. Torn. Because Chocolate Bacon.

So Jules will be receiving a consolation prize that may or may not contain a trophy.

Thanks for celebrating Pi Day with me. What should we do for Star Wars Day?

One Birthday Sunday. Or is that Sundae?

It’s my frickin’ birthday! (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

My train was delayed getting out of the city last night. The rule is that if your train is delayed, you get Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream so I don’t really mind too much when it happens. What? Of course that’s a rule I made up, what are you, new?

I got home after midnight so it was technically my birthday. Add to that the incomprehensible segue to Daylight Saving time and it was like my birthday was running in hyper-drive to meet me!

I had this lovely assortment of cards to open when I got home:

I took Misty’s Laws advice to heart and made sure I had lots of water with me at the Bikram class #1 took me to at 0-dark-thirty this morning.

The kids sang me a truly horrible rendition of Happy Birthday that the puggles joined in. One of these days I’m gonna get that on tape. Or else one of these days the cops are going to come back and give us a ticket instead of just a warning.

Then we had cake for breakfast.

Did you know you can get a bunch of free crap on your birthday just because it’s your birthday if you sign up with everybody’s rewards programs? I totally milked that. Perfume, mascara, and chocolate- what more could a girl want?

The kids cleaned the house up. I was thrilled to also get a $5 starbucks gift card that #4 bought with her own money, and a beautiful blue scarf that #5 knit all by himself in Knitting Club (which pretty much every kid in the 5th grade belongs to, including the boys. I love his teacher).

I even made a new vegetarian black bean chili recipe that I halfway made up and everybody ate it. WOW!

I love birthdays. I wrote this post last year about the things that rock about turning 40, and it all still holds true.

So keeping in the spirit of everything being all about MEEEEEE today, here are MY links.

My favorite, laugh-out-loud picture of little boys doing dishes: No Shirt? No Shoes? No Pants? No Problem! on Nurking Moms.

Howling. This is awesome. Also, people, this is why you should register ALL your domain names. EARLY. Guy Fieri didn’t quite get that done and now there’s guysamericankitchenandbar.com

This one I’m putting in because I loved it and I know it will make my mom cry: Boomer Grandparenting: Able to Leap Tall Continents in a Single Bound

Here’s another one that cracked me up: a little fabulous cartoon about a wedding entrance fail on Happy or Hungry.

Last today is an organization dedicated to helping struggling volunteer fire companies raise money to carry out their services. Via Beer. From a vintage fire truck named Betty Lou. 77Rescue.org

Happy Sunday.

#5 Learns Why He Shouldn’t Open Other People’s Mail

Because we work nights, we usually get home after the kids go to sleep. They leave us notes: tests that need to be signed, permission slips, requests for money, and random thoughts are all written out and laid on the dining room table.

Also, anything that arrives in our absence and is addressed “to the parents of…” is immediately opened, read, and taped shut again. Or hidden in their bedroom in a futile attempt to avoid the inevitable, since our schools always send an email alert saying what we should have received.

This is what we came home to last night:

Sometimes it’s better not to know, isn’t it? At least he didn’t hide the letter.

I usually don’t snoop because it always ends in regret. One year my sister found our Christmas presents and showed them to me. I felt so guilty about it. Christmas morning came and I felt like I had betrayed my parents as I kept saying “Just what I always wanted!” after I opened each non-surprise. Since I can’t remember if we ever actually told this story to our parents or not, this seems like a good place to end this post.