Birthday Foreshadowing

Many of you may not be away that I lost my job back in July. Despite the house, and the gay goings on I usually post in this spot, things have been tight - and that's on a good day. It's difficult to go from gainfully employed to ZERO dollars coming in but we're managing.
But life events creep up - and there are expectations.
Such as...........BIRTHDAYS.
I have a soon to be six year old, who in my opinion hung the moon. He, on the other hand, would remind me that the moon was created when a planetoid collided with the Earth a bajillion years ago and the moon is part of the Earth that blew off at impact.
He's smart like that.
But his birthday is coming. And this child, our first child, has traditionally gotten the red carpet rolled out for his birthday. Even last year, when we were LESS financially secure because of my layoff in '07 and we offered him the FAIR he was ecstatic. We spent the day eating our way through the fair, riding rides and at the end of the day - he looked at us and said,"This was the best birthday I ever had."
Gulp.
Maybe we didn't need to spend all that money at Disney World in the past - eh?
So this year, we've been prepping him - we don't have any money, we don't have any money. It's a mantra. No money. Bills are coming in, we don't have any money.
There will be no "party" etc.
And he's born it with such grace, for a soon to be six year old.
We figured we could take snacks, and be VERY frugal and attend the county fair this past weekend as the kids were all still free. We cautioned him that we had to make choices about RIDES - we can't RIDE every damn thing in the place. We reminded him this was an EARLY birthday outing - as the fair would be gone on his birthday weekend. So - birthday NOT HERE YET - this was just a pre-cursor, an early celebration.

And we can look at the animals, but we can't RIDE the animal rides etc. We can just LOOK.

And despite all that, and the sharing of ONE deep fried food on a stick vs. 10 (Deep fried Milky Way rocks by the way, if you have to choose just ONE).......it was a joyous time.

And as we sat eating our treat, I told him the story of how his FIRST fair was actually the time we went to the Kentucky State Fair - when I was about 8 months pregnant. And he laughed when I told him how many incredibly delicious deep fried foods I ate, and that I was so big, I had to sit down every few feet.
He laughed, and kissed me a powdered sugar kiss and asked,"Well if that was my first fair - I wonder what my last fair will be?"

My eyes grew hot and I hugged him and said,"I hope I never know."