Thirty, Flirty, and Still Unpacking

Today my husband officially entered his third decade, and we celebrated in true Hartwell fashion – with a slightly lopsided homemade cake, a five-year-old artist, and a one-year-old who thinks moving boxes are the best birthday present ever invented.

Thirty, Flirty, and Still Unpacking

Sophie spent all morning working on Marcus’s birthday card, complete with a stick figure family where Dad has “the biggest muscles” and a house that’s definitely not to scale. Theo contributed by trying to taste-test the frosting approximately seventeen times before I moved it to higher ground. The cake itself? Well, let’s just say Pinterest and reality had a slight disagreement, but it tastes better than it looks.

We’re still living out of boxes in some rooms, but there’s something perfect about celebrating Marcus’s first milestone birthday in our actual home. Sure, we ate birthday dinner off paper plates because I still can’t find the good dishes, and yes, Theo used a moving box as a drum set during the happy birthday song. But watching Marcus’s face when Sophie presented her masterpiece card – that’s the stuff that matters.

Here’s to 30 years of Marcus being Marcus, and to many more birthdays in this house that’s slowly but surely becoming our home. Now if someone could help me find the wine glasses, that would be the real birthday miracle.