9!

Some of you remember when she looked like this:

But now she's 9 years old -- the very last year of single digits.

Molly lucked out and had her birthday on a Wednesday so, though she had a little bit of homework, she had no school. She chose to stay as close as possible to her usual stateside birthday breakfast. We substituted dragon bread for the unavailable cinnamon rolls, but stuck with her fruit salad and, as they are known in these parts, doubled eggs. We ate, then packed some breakfast up to take with us and went to meet Dave at the train station. He'd left Pennsylvania about 18 hours earlier and we were sure he would be hungry and tired. He was.

Just thinking about it all made Betsy tired, too.

As you know, Molly loves to cook, so she made herself a brie en croute and fetched bakery bread for lunch, then made her cake before a mysterious ring of the doorbell. But when she answered the door, there was only a note....

...but this is a tale for another post.

After a yummy dinner we had a glopslopcious (see Flapdoodle) dessert followed by presents, presents, presents -- with even some sister presents for Betsy.