We bought balloons like we did last year and wrote messages to Gabe on them and brought him his very own birthday balloon.
Then we sent them up. This year we walked over to the pond before we released them so as to not have a "get stuck in the trees" incident like last year.
Can you see them? They flew right up in a perfect triangle just like that until they were out of sight.
And there were some ducks. (I don't really know what to say about that.)
When we got up to the lake, we had Gabe's birthday cake.
Jonah was more interested in grabbing the flame than actually blowing it out.
So the funny story of this year - when we were packing up to come home, Matt got the cake out of the fridge to take with us. The plastic lid wasn't on well, and the whole cake (minus the tiny little slice Matt had eaten) fell face down on the floor. So that was it, no more birthday cake. It seems every year (well, there have only been two so far) something goes wrong just to remind us to smile a little through the tears.
It was a very hard day for me this year. But again, I loved getting to do some special "Gabe things" just like last year. I haven't decided what to add to his garden this year, but I'm thinking about a humming bird feeder.
Oh yeah, and his dogwood tree did bloom the week of his birthday. I knew it would. :)
