"Happy Birthday Auntie Ba"

I'm going to make this one short and sweet.  It is 'Auntie Ba's' birthday today, and she is as gorgeous, luminescent and wonderfully special as she ever was.  Who else do you know who can still get away with being mistaken for a teenager (she got 'carded' not so long ago in a store trying to buy alcohol...how unfair is that?!)

In fact, truth be told, if it weren't for 'Auntie Ba', Eggie and Dumps might not even be around today.  In the past five years she has ceaselessly campaigned for her nephews that they not suffer from malnourishment, not go to school ignorant of the knowledge of how to count to twenty in French, not imbibed poisonous substances, not suffered a horrible accident, has ensured that they had baths when nobody else displayed the least bit energy or inclination to do so, and even found time on countless occasions to cuddle the monsters and read them a million bedtime stories when the rest of us were carousing downstairs with bottles of wine.

'Auntie Ba' is a gem.  The boys adore her and I can honestly say she couldn't love them more, or care for them more, if she were their own mother.  How lucky am I? 

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY most wonderful 'Auntie Ba'...we all love you and send you a million dirty chocolate kisses from London.  Dumpie has even tentatively promised to try doing a 'wee' on his pottie in honour of you and your auspicious day.

I can't confirm that of course, but will check with him later in the middle of the night when he arrives for his nightly visit.

P.S. Oh yeah, and by the way, now is as good a time to make public our wish that if anything utterly tragic and fatal were to happen to us in the next fifteen-odd years,  I'm afraid that YOU shall have to raise them.  Now there's a sobering thought...