Happy Birthday Emi December 2025

Thursday Dec 11

We’ve had a pretty peaceful uneventful day. It’s been snowing almost every day in Minnesota and it’s been pretty cold too so it wasn’t hard at all to tear ourselves away. My fingers have been so raw and cracked; I’m happy to leave just to give them a chance to heal. My only regret is leaving the dogs, mostly Harper. She’ll turn 16 while we’re in California (on the 14th) and I know our days with her are limited. She’s doing great for such an old dog but it can’t last forever.

We got to the airport plenty early. We parked in the ParknFly covered parking, so no worries about snow, and there was a bus right there waiting for us. Our flight was on time and everything went smoothly except when we got to San Francisco there was a plane at our gate. We waited about 15 minutes but then our pilot got impatient and asked the airport to find us a different gate, which they finally did. Then we had to wait awhile for our bags, so Dan had to circle for awhile. Finally, we were on our way to Los Altos.

As soon as we got there we said hi to everyone and then turned right around and left again. I needed some food and we needed wrapping paper, a card, and ribbon for Emi’s birthday tomorrow. We brought presents for Christmas too but we have a few days before we need to wrap them.

We got tacos at the Super Taco Truck. I read that the veggie ones were great and they really were. I gobbled them right up.

Back at the house we spent the rest of the afternoon playing with Emi and wrapping gifts. We had Chinese takeout for dinner and Emi ate a huge amount of rice and tofu. They had plain tofu for her, but she tried some of Dan’s mapatofu and decided she liked it so we put some sauce on her plain tofu and she ate a lot of that as well.

She is really a toddler now, talking up a storm, understanding even more, and of course does not like to be thwarted. She’ll get upset but can usually be redirected. She’s a lot of fun.

Friday Dec 12

Happy birthday Emi! I managed to sleep until almost 5. It was pretty chilly but once I had my breakfast and enough coffee I went ahead and ran, even thought it was still dark. I had thrown a headlamp in my suitcase at the last minute thinking this might be a good idea, so I would be finished running and could help with Emi right away. It was in the low 40’s and I could see my breath but it was still way better than zero and having to wear kahtoolas to make it through the snow.

When I got back everyone else was just getting up. It was only  7! I jumped in the shower and was ready to start the day.

We watched Emi most of the day, but gave each other breaks and helped with other stuff as well. Dan had made the cake for Emi’s birthday the night before, but he was making the family famous butter cream frosting and I’m good at it so I volunteered to make it. We had to run out and buy a hand mixer first, however! I just know that when mixing this frosting it's best to put the icing in a smaller bowl inside a bigger bowl containing ice cubes and you can’t do that with a stand mixer. The icing came out great, although I had to work to spread it on one of the layers. It wasn’t beautiful but it was delicious!

Lee  got us bahn mi sandwiches for lunch. He tried a new place and it was fine, but the bread left a lot to be desired. Around 1 we took Emi on a walk and she fell asleep right away. We stopped for coffee on the way back and she slept until after 2.

We spent the afternoon playing. Around 5 we headed to Palo Alto for dinner at Yayoi, the Japanese Katsu place. We met Craig and Jean there. They used to have online menus that I hated but they got rid of them and I was delighted! I was finally able to figure out what to order. I got a chicken Katsu dinner that was very good.

Emi ate and ate and ate. Agadashi tofu, dumplings, noodles. We finally had to drag her away because we still needed to go back to the house, eat the cake, sing happy birthday and open presents and it was getting late. She threw a fit when we finally made her stop eating!

In the car she started asking each of us to sing happy birthday. When she got to Kelsey, she hasn’t been feeling great and she was dozing so we told Emi that mama was sleeping, and Emi started yelling at the top of her lungs, “MAMA WAKE UP!!!!!” over and over! She wouldn’t stop and got quite upset. Toddlers! They want what they want, until you can finally distract them with something else.

Back at the house we sang happy birthday, blew out the two candles, and ate some cake and vanilla ice cream. It really did taste delicious. It’s one of my very favorite cakes.

Then Emi opened her presents. She got some great stuff, a little kid scooter from Craig and Jean. a brio train set from her mom and dad, a princess dress and magic wand from us, although I think she liked her card the best because it plays happy birthday when you open it!