Today, my lovely beautiful friend Renee, known to all of you as But Why Mommy, is 40 years old. This is a reason to celebrate. Every birthday should be celebrated, but the big ones especially. I thought that since I can’t actually take her out, I’d do the next best thing…I’d throw her a blog party. It’s like a block party, except that the block is the entire inter-web. Friends can post about Renee today, tell her how amazing she is and how much we all hope she has a great birthday. Best part is, no one has to bring anything made of jello. Because really, who still eats jello?

I met Renee the first day of the BlogHer conference this summer. Funny but people had previously said, do you know But Why Mommy and I’d go, no who? They’d tell me her blog address and I’d file it in the, I will get over there one day file. Somehow I never got there. I found myself going out to dinner with her (and about nine other people) that first night and the rest is history. Renee is amazingly awesome, she’s funny, sweet and kind. We hit it off right away. Literally we spent the rest of the conference hanging out. All of my best conference moments had her in it. I may have tasked her as my bodyguard one night. What man? She’s tall, she can protect short ass me.

This picture is from the Cheeseburger party at BlogHer. From left to right is Kirsten, me (enjoy it peeps, it may never happen again), Matthew, Kari and Renee. See, did I not tell you that the girl is beautiful. Even with Cheeseburger hat. And tall, the brat is tall. As tall as I wished and hoped I would be. *sob*

Renee, I wish more than anything that we all lived close together and I could have set up a surprise party for you. More than that, I wish we could have coffee dates and dinner dates and that we could hang out in person. Internet hugs just aren’t quite the same, although they work pretty well most days. This however, was the best I could do.

I made a cake for you. See? Sadly, it was kinda tiny and a smallish boy attacked it on his first birthday. Shrug. You’ve got to be faster about these things, my friend. Okay fine it was his cake…but still I made a cake.

I hope you have a great birthday darlin. I wish I could be there to do something for you, but I hope this makes it a little bit easier. I hope this helps you not be sad. Even though we aren’t there, we are all thinking about you today. Today is your day. Today, you should be celebrated, even if it’s just online. We are your friends and we love you, even if we don’t see you today.

Love, Issa

ps. Renee, Scott emailed me. Sweet email too. Made me all happy. Possibly made me cry. I was going to do something for you today, but this? Everyone doing this for you? He helped big time. It was because of his email, that I thought of having a blog party. That’s a great guy you’ve got there. Truly.

pps. This is the Mr. Linky for all of Renee’s birthday posts. Told you, it’s a blog party. Please go and check them all out. Make sure to say hi while you’re there.

DUDE!!!!! This linky thing isn’t showing how I thought I did. More than likely I did it wrong. Hi, I has no idea what I’m doing. Anyway, if you click on it, it will show you everyone who has posted for Renee. EDIT: never mind, Mommy Geekology fixed it for me.