Page 36 of Their Little House Colter
The cake still didn’t look good.
“Sprinkles!” I ran to the cupboard and dug through until I found some from Christmastime. It wasn’t Christmas, but that was okay. It wasn’t like sprinkles were actual food. They didn’t expire…probably. Second-guessing myself, I tried one, decided it was fine, and poured a bunch onto the cake.
“It’s still—” Dallas’ infectious smile was turning upside down. I couldn’t have that.
“I have an idea.” I put the cake carrier lid on then dragged Dallas to the door. “Let’s go.”
We ended up at the party store, in the aisle where all the birthday candles were. I had no idea there were so many options. Sure, there were the little normal ones, but they also had some that were like pop-up books, taking up most of the top of the cake, with the candle in the middle and playing a song when you lit it.
It was twenty dollars, which seemed ridiculous for a candle.
“We need this one.” Dallas pulled one off the rack that had two onesies on it, both in blue. The song was a lullaby, hardly “Happy Birthday.”
“You are a genius.” I grabbed it from him and put it in our cart. Dallas was right—it solved all of our problems while at the same time symbolizing us.
Safe to say, we got a little carried away from there, getting streamers and whistles and birthday crowns. The next thing I knew, our cart looked more like a little kid’s birthday party than a daddy birthday party. But, in a way, that was sort of perfect.
He was in court all day, and we wanted to have everything ready when he got back. There was now a lot to do. We gave up the notion of having it be a grown-up, elegant party pretty much immediately and instead headed to the playroom, decorating it with streamers and balloons and little rubber duckies we picked up at the register.
The playroom was one of the first things we did when we moved in, and it was our favorite place. We still went back to the little house and played with our friends—they would always be part of our family—but this…this was home. I’d never been happier.
“Okay, since we’re doing this, and we obviously gave up the wholelet’s be romantic and old schoolthing, how about we get dressed for him?” Dallas bounced on the balls of his feet the way he did when he was over-the-moon excited about something.
I loved the idea, and the two of us went to our room, digging through our things until we found an outfit we had been saving for the little weekend that was coming up.
Daddy didn’t even know about these.
We loved being twinsies sometimes. Today was one of those days. There was something really cool about having the same things or dressing the same. When we heard about the little weekend, we’d ordered matching outfits online—both of whichfeatured the same duck as the one on the beanie I saw Dallas wearing when I first moved into the little house.
We paired that with matching light-up sneakers because I had managed to bring Dallas over to the dark side on that one, and some knee-high socks withDaddy’s Boyprinted all over them.
“We look so stinking cute. I can’t stand it.” Dallas pulled me in for a kiss before I could agree.
“Where should we wait? In the playroom or the bedroom? Or at the door? What should we do?” For some reason, I was suddenly nervous.
Thank goodness, we didn’t have time to figure it out before the front door opened.
“I got out early,” Daddy called. “Where are my sweet boys?”
“Excellent!” Dallas squeed. “He’s already here!”
We ran to greet him, all sense of a plan out the window.
In each of his hands, he held a gift bag. Wasn’t it his birthday?
“Happy birthday, Daddy!”
We threw our arms around him, and he nearly toppled over.
“Hello, sweet boys! Don’t you look adorable—twinsies, even.”
“We definitely are twinsies! And we made a party! And it’s in our playroom, and you should come! We made the cake ourselves! It’s really good—or maybe not good, but it could be good!” Dallas was even more excited than I was, based on the way he rambled.
“I’m ready for a party. Daddy even brought you presents.”
He handed us each a gift bag.
“But it’s your birthday, Daddy! The presents aren’t supposed to be ours.”
