Birthday Vortex

To my son Tommy,

You have done it!  A major accomplishment of completing five years of life on this crazy blue marble we call Earth.  I attribute most of your success to your mother and a little to dumb luck befitting of your Irish ancestry.  Of course if you don't start eating your dinner like a five year old should, your mother may decide you won't see six!

Legos are the gift of the year for you.  We are inundated with these little locking blocks.  We have another dozen or so sets to put together.  You are blessed with a generous extended family who made sure your birthday loot was quite abundant.  Receiving some nice indoor activity gifts is quite timely with the extreme cold weather we are starting to get tonight.  Seems mother nature wanted to give the most memorable gift and decided to send down the polar vortex.  I didn't even realize that we had this big arctic cyclone and how cold it could make things.  The cold irony is much of Alaska is warmer than the temperatures achieved recently in the midwest of our country and coming to our Baltimore area tonight.  When a thirty two degree Anchorage seems balmy, you know it is cold.

So vortex is the buzzword on your birthday this year.  A vortex of cold air abounds outside and a vortex of Legos abound inside.  Luckily we have a vortex of love to keep us warm.  Now we just need a vortex of patience to get us through dinner tonight and through putting together all these little building blocks.  Happy birthday my son.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo