Happy Birthday Jeff!

When I look at the faces of my beautiful daughters, I see their dad, my husband Jeff. They all look very much like him. Beyond their looks, each has some of his very best qualities too. Like their dad, these girls are very smart and very down to earth, each has a goofy sense of humor and they are genuinely compassionate. Jeff is an aggressive antitrust attorney so it's easy to overlook his tremendous compassion for others but Jeff helps people in need on a regular basis (he has been known to help crazy old men cross the street and he helps people up after they've fallen on the street, which seems to happen a lot). He is a good soul and he has a good soul. He also has a lower patience threshold than anyone I've ever known; that is, anyone until our daughters were born. Jeff is a great guy whom I love very, very much and I get a total kick seeing elements of him in each of our daughters.

Our kids love it when we tell them our stories - what we were like and what we were up to when we were kids. Jeff is notorious (within the confines of our nuclear family circle) for beginning stories with "When daddy was a little boy..." Parenthood has given Jeff a much needed motivator to connect with his inner child and, like at least one of our daughters, he can't seem to get through a story that begins with "When daddy was a little boy" without erupting into fits of laughter.So Happy Birthday Jeff! Kids and laughter are keeping you young and fun.

If you've been following this blog then you know that I am linking each post to a book that is a finalist for the 2011 Children's Choice Book Awards, the only national awards program for books where the finalists and winners are selected by children and teens. There is one book on the 5th-6th Grade Book of the Year list that is just too perfect for this post. In Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, Book1), we meet Sadie and Carter, 2 siblings who have lived apart for several years. They do not know each other very well, they do not know themselves very well and they learn that they never knew their parents very well either. Readers learn that they have inherited many qualities from their father and at the ages of 12 and 14, they are only just beginning to figure it all out. Sadie and Carter learn that they were descended from ancient pharaohs,  that they have god-like powers and that their earthly bodies are temporarily inhabited by Egyptian gods. Turns out the apples do not fall too far from the tree; their father, Dr. Julius Kane, also has magical powers. He is an Egyptian magician who is a host of the god Osiris, god of the Afterlife, the underworld and the dead. Rick Riordan's books get devoured in my household and it's easy to see why!

As a side note and yet completely relevant to this topic, you may recall from a prior post that, last summer,  my kids and Jeff all agreed that he might actually be Zeus. It turns out that Zeus had many mortal and immortal offspring. I can't help but wonder which are being hosted by my daughters. I'm thinking they are among the following:

APHRODITE The Goddess of Love was, according to some, a daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Dione (most accounts, however, say she was born in the sea from the severed genitals of Ouranos).

ATHENE The Goddess of Warcraft, Wisdom and Craft was sprung directly from the head of Zeus. Her mother was the Titaness Metis whom Zeus had swallowed whole in pregnancy.


EIRENE The Goddess of Peace, one of the three Horai, was a daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Themis.


EUNOMIA The Goddess of Good Governance, one of the three Horai, was a daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Themis.


HARMONIA The Goddess of Harmony was, according to one author, a daughter of Zeus and the Pleiad Elektra (the usual account makes her a daughter of Ares and Aphrodite who was only fostered by the Pleiad).


HEBE The Goddess of Youth was a daughter of Zeus and Hera.


PERSEPHONE The Goddess of the Underworld and Renewal of Spring was a daughter of Zeus and Demeter (or, according to one account, of Zeus and Styx).




Could be true! :)