Happy day after my birthday! Thanks to everyone for your birthday wishes–I had a great day, thanks! Wade and I went to a lovely French restaurant for dinner and shared a cheese plate and a scallops appetizer that came with a honey fig sauce, and a creme brulee (and wine! lots of wine!) and I wore my fabulous satiny espadrilles with the four-inch heels, which really are good sitting-down-drinking-wine shoes. After dinner, because it was too soon to go home, we went to the mall, which sounds like such a dumb thing to do but is way more fun without the kids; we ended up, as usual, at the Apple store, licking the iMacs.

We got home just in time to tuck the boys in and hear the tornado sirens go off, and spent the rest of the evening drinking and watching the local news* and wondering if we were going to have to cram four adults and two kids into a bathroom the size of a Kleenex box. Charlie decided to pretend that he was scared, so he came out and watched storm footage with us for an hour, including some really amazing pictures of a tornado touching down at an airport in El Reno, Oklahoma (I have NO IDEA how far that is from Oklahoma City, but it’s not in my neighborhood). Henry just hung out in his bed, playing with a light-up dinosaur and talking to himself; eventually, I went to check on him and we opened his blinds and watched the lightening, which was really cool. And then it was over and we all went to bed. Happy birthday!

*If you’re from Oklahoma City, click that link. Really! So very funny!

Today, though, it was back to the usual grind (get it? Grind? I’m going to talk about COFFEE! Get it? GET IT?). The fabulous people at Boca Java have introduced a new line of coffees for bloggers, and because I am such a coffee whore discriminating coffee drinker, they sent me a generous box of samples to road test. There were two dark roasts, two mild roasts, and two flavored coffees. I let my parents pick what we would drink–you know, in exchange for free childcare–and they went for the flavored coffees. For the rundown on the dark roasts, check out the very pretty and very funny Mir’s review, which was also guided by her parents’ coffee preferences. Funny coincidence, no?

We started with the Blogger’s Pajama Passion, which is described as an “exotic flavored coffee featuring vanilla, kahlua and caramel.” It was delicious–my dad was using words like “smooth” and “full-bodied” which made us all giggle (although both were very appropriate). My mother said, “It would be really good with a shot of Kahlua in it.”

I said, “I’m going to write that on the Internet.”

She laughed and said, “No, no, say something like, ‘It would make a wonderful after-dinner coffee.’”

“Nope,” I said. “I’m going to write that my mom said we needed to put Kahlua in the coffee at 11:00 am.”

This morning, we tried the Blogger’s Beach Blend, which is “a tantalizing combination of chocolate kiss and caramel” (apparently they’re big on the caramel, the Boca Java people). It was also delicious, but this time we cut right to the chase and decided that what it really needed was a shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream. At 8:00 am.

Alcoholic tendencies aside, if you like flavored coffees, with or without any additional flavoring, these are worth a try. They were delicious and smooth, but not overly flavory, and they really DID taste like vanilla and chocolate and caramel. Yummy! Order some now! And then tell me how I get someone to send me some wine to review!

(As an aside, the Boca Java folks also sent me a mug and a hat, with their Always blog on a full tank logo on them. And while the coffee gets two thumbs up, the hat will be living in my closet–I can’t really see myself going out in any piece of clothing with the word “blog” on it. But that may just be me.)

Edited to add: Good lord, the spelling errors! All fixed now. So sorry! So pitiful . . .