Happy Birthday, Little Brother.

The Birthday Kids, circa 1982. 

This is what birthdays looked like for my brother and I for quite a few years.  Our birthdays are just two days apart (July 3 and July 5), which I suspect was planned by my father as a way to economize on cakes and parties.  But it was fun to share our birthdays, for the most part--there wasn't that jealousy about one sibling getting gifts and the other one not getting any.  We usually celebrated on the 4th, and often at our grandparents' home in Iowa Falls.  If we had parties with our friends, we learned to do that a couple weeks before our birthdays, because people were out of town for the 4th of July.   

Today Chris and his boys are on the road heading east for a visit home, with some side trips along the way.  We haven't seen them for two years and we are looking forward to their visit.  Jacob can't wait to play with his big cousins.  And we will have some birthday cake together, too, just like old times.