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On my birthday, I decided to set out in search of a birthday cake. I had planned to search earlier in the week, but did not, so my birthday arrived and I had no cake. (Dale had offered to bake a cake with the kids or buy one from a local restaurant. The restaurant makes cakes I love but the kids don’t love).

I appreciated his offer, but I wanted to find an actual bakery. A place you walk into that smells yummy and there are bakery cases with donuts, cakes, cookies, pies, bread and rolls. I didn’t want the bakery to be inside a gigantic supermarket, or the cake to be mass produced.

Finding a bakery is an easy task in the midwest where thousands of German, French, Dutch, and Italian immigrants settled. In the midwest,  everyone loves bakeries and keeps them in business. In Virginia, people must be worried about their health. We midwest people don’t worry too much about their health.

When I asked around for bakeries, most people couldn’t name one in the area. After much thought, one friend remembered one in Quantico town. Quantico town is a place most people would declare, “You’ll have to see it to believe it.” The town started out as a fishing village and eventually developed an old fashioned main street with barber shops and restaurants. Then the Marine Corps surrounded it. It is entirely enclosed by the base and the potomac river. It is lost in time.

The bakery is across from the train station and makes fabulous apple fritters and bread. It’s more like a little coffee shop when you walk in. You have to order ahead if you want a cake. So, no cake, but good bread.

When I left the bakery, I walked along the potomac, eating an apple fritter and enjoying the beautiful morning God had made. After weeks of much rain and gray, the sky was sparkling blue and the sun was warm. Amazingly the temperature was sixty degrees on December 3rd. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the sun reflected off the water; it was lovely.

When I walked back to the van, I called my friend Mo, since I consider her better than a GPS. She has lived in Northern Virginia forever and when I can’t find something she tells me where to look. She directed me to a bakery in Fredericksburg, a town further south.

There I found what I was looking for: Paul’s Bakery, right next to the Salvation Army. It met the criteria: yummy smell, baked goods lined up in bakery cases, a birthday cake to buy, and a line of men. You know it is a good bakery if there are men lined up buying donuts. If men are willing to go out of their way to stop and buy donuts instead of choosing the easy solution of buying one at the Wawa, the place must be good.

The baker gladly piped “Happy Birthday Mugs” on the cake, she didn’t mind me wandering around considering it all, and there were a lot of people in the back baking. The cakes were standard yellow or chocolate with white frosting. It tasted fresh and the kids loved it.

Searching for a bakery – a good way to spend a birthday.

Traditions are a haphazard thing with me. Some of my traditions are based on activities the Meloch family did when I was growing up (birthday cake to Jesus, hiding Easter baskets) and some I picked up from various places that I have lived. I picked up one such tradition while I was in Germany.

Last night, Gabe said, “Mom, tomorrow’s December 1st and you forgot to get the chocolate calendars!” Boys after the ages of 7 love to be know-it-alls. They view themselves as so much smarter than their mothers and inform their mothers of this fact throughout the day.

I have developed the following response to this “I’m smarter than you attitude” based on education completed. For me, I say, “The day you start your Master’s Degree at University is the day you are smarter than me. Until that day, I am smarter than you whether you believe it or not.” If you did not go to college, you may adjust this remark to , “The day you start college or trade school is the day you are smarter than me. Until that day, I am smarter than you whether you believe it or not.”

Hopefully, by the time that day comes they’ll be out of the house and no longer driving you nuts. When I told Gabe this, he replied, “The day I start my Masters degree, I’m going to call you on the phone and say, ‘Mom, I’m smarter than you’.” I’m certain he will. The kid will probably get a phD, just to prove how much smarter he is than his mother. If he wasn’t so like his mother in doing whatever it takes to prove someone wrong, it would be easier to stomach.

Not wanting only to prove his mother wrong, last night he decided to prove his aunt wrong as well. Every year my brother-in-law’s mom sends me a wreath she makes from the pines on her land in Northern Minnesota. Whenever I open the box, the smell of home greats me.

Considering this a good task for Gabe, I told him to hang the wreath under the lights by the door. I asked him to check if his daddy had any wire and a wire cutter for the task. He declared, “I’m going to use a pipe cleaner, it has wire in it.” I was on the phone with my sister at the time and she commented that she didn’t think that would hold. After hearing this comment, Gabe was determined to prove her wrong.

He found a 10 pound exercise hand weight and tied it under a chair using the pipe cleaner to test the pipe cleaner’s strength. (The boy spends an excessive amount of time watching myth busters, his new favorite show, and is constantly relaying to me how the two guys have proven or disproved something.) The kid is destined to be a mechanic or engineer or maybe a mad scientist.

The wreath is now hanging by a pipe cleaner safely outside under the light. It looks lovely.

However, even though he had proven my sister wrong, he was behind the power curve with the chocolate calendars. Abby informed him of this fact, “Gabe, Mom buys the calendars in,like, August!” (Eye roll for emphasis)

She was close. Not quite August, but October. At the Commissary (military grocery store) they put out the German Christmas items at the same time as the Halloween candy. I buy them right away every year and store them away for fear of repeating the mistake of waiting too long and finding them sold out.

I first started buying them for Dale and I when we were assigned to Germany in the early 1990s. The calendars are a simple thin rectangle of cardboard with little doors to open from 1 to 24. Under each door is a piece of chocolate pressed into a holiday shape (present, tree, candle, etc.)

You eat a piece of chocolate and count down the days until Christmas. In my opinion, a fabulous tradition.