Happy Birthday, Joy!

I am taking a brief break to write while my champagne-crème fraîche sauce thickens. It's my baby's birthday, the one day that always brings me out of my mid-winter blues and back into celebration. The salmon and shrimp are in the oven and the risotto is on the stove-top. Over the Rhine is playing softly in the background, and Joy is drinking a glass of champagne while she gets dolled up for when we meet some friends for drinks and desserts after dinner. See what I mean about getting out of that mid-winter slump? This is perfect.

Joy turned 26 today. She's past a quarter-century now, and is my own little rock star. She's winning teaching awards, taking over her current school with her big library dreams for little readers, is starting a dance ministry with our local church, is an accomplished chef (in my opinion, she's recently moved past the "cook" stage into the "chef" arena), and I still get quite excited everytime I see her and know we're going to spend the day or evening together.

One moment...gotta go check on my sauce...

It's good, but not amazing. I threw in some more pepper and fresh thyme and am going to get it to thicken a bit more to move it up in its level of deliciousness. We'll see...

I am tremendously thankful for Joy. In the past year, she finished her Master's degree in Education, wrote a library grant for her school, survived a week with the Beckers in Missouri (and also survived the ticks that we extracted from her leg and scalp!), managed to not yell at me when I sent one of our canoes down the whitewater in the Boundary Waters, and, this tops the cake, allowed--nay, encouraged--me to follow my own passions and dreams that brought us here to Ohio. She's quite the gal indeed.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from this year. Tell me, which one is your favorite?


















Happy Birthday, Joy!