and my grandmother called me pie face...

Forty five years ago, on Thanksgiving day, my mother delivered the nine-pound turkey that turned out to be me.

The family allegedly missed dessert that day, which might explain my life long obsession with pie.

Here are two of the four I made on Wednesday:

A few days ago, I apologetically told Ric that there would only be two apple, one pumpkin and one toll house pie for Thanksgiving.

We'd almost be pie impoverished.

(We take pie pretty seriously around here.)

 

This is one of the earliest art journally kind of things I ever did:

 

 

Once, when we lived 3,000 miles away and had neither the time nor means to come home to our families, we had the "All pie Thanksgiving."

This has morphed into a separate holiday with a core group of pie-obsessed friends and their offspring.  Last year we had 9 varieties (with doubles on the pork pie and apple pie for a grand total of 11 pies for 10 people.)

This was my ode to the day:

But I digress.

One of the nicest things about having a birthday near Thanksgiving is that it greatly increases the odds of not having to work on the actual anniversary of your birth.

("Hey Ric, you wanna know why today is awesome?  Because it's my birthday.  and I don't have to work")

Today started with pie for breakfast, and presents from my guys (art books - hooray!), and then the rest of the day was my own.

There was lots of art, and singing along to the iPod, and hanging Christmas lights in the unseasonably warm sunshine.  There was more pie, and more art, and leftover turkey and a rousing game of dominoes with the extended family.

There was no cake.  Cake is stupid.

Who would ever eat cake when there is pie?

It was a perfect birthday. 

When I went looking for the above newborn picture, I found these favorites from just a few years later.

They say your personality is pretty well set by age 2, and when you look at these pictures you'll see not much has changed.

 

This is still one of my most comfortable positions:

 

I still wear more than one hat and could use an extra hand.

(and my tights still get baggy around the knees)

I still enjoy a good bottle of something or other.

 

and I'm still unstoppable on a beach.

Here's one of the things my mother wrote about me at this age:

 See?  some things never change.

I did put down my superballs long enough to continue my 40-day creativity experiment today, but you're going to have to wait until tomorrow to see that.

I'm off to have another slice of pie.