Sometimes things work out

Today, after church I went with the boys to my In-laws for a bar-b-que/party for Dante's birthday.  He will be 13 tomorrow and I've been busy trying to wrap my mind around that one.  School has kept me busy enough to ignore the reality until now, but it's here and there's nothing I can do about it anymore...nothing but accept it and roll with the punches.  So, I brought over a half-sheet cake from Sam's Club and we hung out with family.  It was great!  It was the first time that I've ever had a large party for Dante.  With his birthday being the 5th of July and all, most people are away on vacation and we just can't get anyone together.  Well, Weina knew how much this meant to me because I cried to her on the phone for 30 minutes when I thought Alex's play-date party wasn't going to get off the ground, so she called her family and told them in no uncertain terms that they were to change their plans and be there for Dante...and they did, and they were.  She even had her brother fly in, and some of his cousins dropped what they were doing to come by.  The only let down was that it was fast-Sunday and Dante and I were fasting (in our own way...Dante isn't allowed to fast so he gives up junk food) so I didn't eat until pretty late and Dante didn't get any of his cake till dinner time.  But that was a minor inconvenience given what I got in return and I was happy to do it.  Alex had a great time, everyone was in a good mood, Aaron came (!), and we stayed until about 6:30pm when I finally decided that I needed to get Alex in the tub and into bed.

Right now Dante had a friend, that he met when he was at his grandparents' last weekend, over to stay the night.  We'll be taking them to a movie tomorrow and they'll hang out for Dante's birthday.  His friend (Ike) is exactly one day younger than Dante so I'll be getting him back to spend his birthday with his Grandfather.  This is Dante's first sleep-over, and the boys are having a great time.  I'll be sad to see Ike go back home, but it does make me feel much better to know that Dante can make friends so easily and to see that he was pretty into the idea of having him stay the night.  This is good stuff, given that my son spent most of the school year in a depressive fog caused by his ADHD meds.  So tomorrow I have to cook breakfast for these boys, send them out with Aaron to the movies so that I can work on school stuff, and then take them all over to Nana's for another bar-b-que.  Today was over all one of the best days ever, and I'm just content.  I hope that I get more just like this one.