1. After the bike rally meeting on my birthday, the whole family went out to dinner together. The restaurant wouldn't let us bring the cake that Ken baked in, so we walked to where his car was parked and had cake there. 
2. This turned out to be more fun than having cake in a restaurant, which probably says a whole lot of things about relaxing and letting go and making the most of situations, which I will try to remember. Again.
3. I love this picture. 
4. In case you didn't notice, Ken and I put our ages (now that we are older) onto cakes in binary. Yes, we do think this is cool. 
5. Yeah, we know it probably is actually dorky. 
6. It was a very happy birthday.
7. Saturday Sam and I went to a Romni Wools, where I had a big of an incident (more on that tomorrow) which is not at all surprising.
8. What was totally surprising was that while we were there, Sam asked me to buy her yarn. Sam knows how to knit, but seldom expresses and urge to do so. I bought the yarn she wanted and successfully resisted the urge to kiss her or even make it sound like a good idea. As a matter of fact, I have been a mother long enough to have managed to look annoyed. (Sam's only 18. Parental disapproval still makes a few things look delicious.)
9. Lest ye think that Samantha has taken all leave of her senses and experienced a radical personality shift - after we bought yarn she tried to get me to buy "matching tattoos".
10. On Sunday I rode my bike 110k. (About 68 miles, for my American friends.) That's the longest ride I've ever taken in my life. The training rides are all that long now, as we come into the last 6 weeks of preparation for the big ride.
11. I sort of wanted to die.
12. But I didn't.
13. As thanks for everyone who's donated to anyone on our little family team, today marks the first Karmic Balancing draw. If you donated to us you should have gotten an email explaining how to enter. If you didn't, or it got chewed up by your spam filter or something, just send me an email and I'll explain how - and you can enter for next week (and the week after, and the week after - every Monday until the rally, and one Monday after.) I've sent everyone who got lucky an email.
For this week - Susan S and Chery H will each be receiving $100 of their choice of knitting needles and hooks from the generous souls at Lantern Moon. (Isn't that nice?) 
From Jeni at Fyberspates, a wonderful gift. One of her pattern books, and the yarn to make one of the sweaters in it. (Knitters choice!) 
Those will be going out to Erika P and Gail G - with many thanks.
The kind and remarkable Carrie at Irish Girlie Knits is donating three packages of three downloadable patterns each (and she has some beauties) and the random number generator says that those will go to Jennifer L, Leslie B and Linda F.
Lovely Amanda, at Crabapple Yarns has lovely yarn, and lovely gifts.
These beautiful skeins (Pizzazz yarn) are her colourways "Kent" and "D'arcy Spice" 
and they'll be going to live with Renee P.
These two beauties (also Pizzazz) are "Champlain" and "Cameo" and will be going to live with Susiannah B.
Thanks so much for playing along everybody, and I'll do another draw next week. If you were still considering donating, the links for our little family team are here:
Me
Ken
Erin
Amanda
Samantha
Pato
Katie
Thanks to everyone who donated. We're very grateful.