birthdays in quarantine

Abigail turned 15, and Nathan turned 7!!

On Abigail's birthday we biked over to her favorite restaurant to pick up takeout, then went over and ate it by the high school in the little front garden outside the freshman cafeteria. The last time Abigail was there, she was hanging out and eating with her friends, so it was pretty bittersweet (especially the part where she cupped her hands around her face and looked through the glass to see that the monitor displaying the day's menu was still on...).




I have a lot of feelings about these two birthdays, mostly because both kids have been talking for months about their birthday plans. Big parties, Kings Island with friends/family (even though yikes Neil and I were planning to be at DisneyLand by ourselves on Abigail's birthday...). But they were both great sports about it and we managed to make things pretty celebratory, I think. And Abigail's started (online) driver's ed!

Other random things...Neil and I are really into long Saturday morning bike rides right now instead of long runs. For some reason it's really nice to bike because we can go so much further and gosh I am SO darn sick of the roads/trails around our house right now--definitely seeing waaaaay too much of them!! Last week we biked up to a reservoir about 11 miles away from our house and went down to the sand and just sat there for awhile listening to the water slap against the shore. It was perfect.




Then we came home and tore apart our deck (which is nice because if I had run 21 miles I would be lying on the floor all day feeling sorry for myself, but with biking I was just kind of tired but could still do stuff).

And like everyone else in the world...lots of baking happening here. This is my new favorite book. So fascinating and that reminds me...I need to go tend to my dough! Here's yesterday's bread, topped with lots of Boursin cheese and smoked salmon. The very very best.