Papa's Birthday

We officially have a senior citizen in the family now. Mark celebrated his birthday and turned the big 6-0. Seeing how we are such a nice and supporting family, we wanted to make this transition as easy as possible. There were so many options as far as gift giving went. First, Nate and I debated about getting him a subscription to the AARP magazine. Once we deemed that too frivolous, we thought about going the more practical route by getting him a package of adult-sized Depends. However, with a move like that, Nate surely would have been written out of the will, so we ended up getting Mark a boring old gift card. Even though we ended up going the safe route, Nate and I had a lot of fun strolling the grocery aisles looking for inappropriate gag gifts for old people. Suffice it to say, growing old with Nate will be an adventure in and of itself. 

For his birthday treat, Mark chose a cake from Le Croissant. And when I say "a cake," what I really mean is "the cake." They make a delicious banana cake with cream cheese frosting that is absolutely amazing. This cake is so good that it is completely worth the six hours you have to spend at the gym running off the calories you will consume just by eating one piece. Charlene began placing the candles and once we realized we wouldn't have enough candles (seriously, who owns 60 candles?), we decided that each candle could represent 4-5 years.

We sang a quick rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday" Burk-style, which typically involves a lot of off-key notes and shrieking, before all the smoke had a chance to set off the fire alarms. Thankfully, Mark isn't too picky and gave our efforts an "A-OK." He then enlisted the help of Brynlee and Liam to blow/spit out the candles. After all, I hear that once you hit 60 your lung capacity decreases by like fifty percent :)

We had a great time celebrating Mark and tried not to make too many "now you're old" jokes. He laughed along good-naturally for most of the comments being thrown at him by his sons and occasionally, his daughter-in-laws. But then again, since he is 60, maybe his hearing is leaving him and he was just laughing because everyone else was laughing. . . .