Dear Roger: Monkey Says, "Boys Are Weird!" and That Makes Me Happy

I'm trying to start planning for Stevie's 9th birthday. No matter what happens, I want it to be better than last years and I want it to erase the sadness and loss she felt when her favorite band broke up right before her birthday last year. She already has plans with our boys to go out to Karaoke for an epic day of singing at the Voicebox, followed by Sushi and then shopping in the Alphabet District and the Pearl. I had considered trying to contact her favorite boys management folk and seeing if I could buy her an autographed picture or something, but I have no idea who to contact anymore. I'm going to buy her the music I can find from what are left of the band boys, and the movies I can track down, and then the big event of the day is that the boys and I will be taking her to finally getting her ears pierced.
She asked them to go with her and hold her hands while she gets it done and she really looks up to them. I may tell her then that we are driving to Madison, Wisconsin in June for the Spencer Bell Legacy concert and that she is actually going to get to go. We had been planning on flying in and just attending the concert and flying back home, but now we will be driving the high Northern route, doing the tourist thing on the way there and coming back the Southern route and doing the same so in order to expose her to the maximum amount of states and cool things.
The boys have brought so much fun and happiness to our lives. The humor and laughter that flows around our home is a daily occurrence and we all seem to be doing better for the experience. We have dinner together every night and Stevie has a tutor for her penmanship and other homework who takes the time to challenge her intellect. My sons have found kindred spirits for their video gaming geekiness and I have found friends who share my love of Zombies and comic books and who enjoy teasing my eldest son about his stick up the butt personality so he is actually starting to relax and joke back. They tease me about my lack of girl skills and then actually help me sort of figure out how not to be so butch. They are male companionship and friendship that we all needed and they are expanding our world in new and exciting ways and I like to think we are doing the same for them.
We are going to Comic Con together this next week, something I would not have normally done with the kids before I met them, and that is a sign of just how far we have come. They brought it up yesterday right after they walked through the door and handed me my belated Valentines present, a stuffie that is a sperm cell. Stevie looked up from where she was saw the stuffie, rolled her eyes and said,"You guys are weird, just WEIRD!" Causing all of us to turn and stare at her asking how in the hell she knew what it was, to which she replied, "Science, DUH!"
Our lives have become a very strange and joyful tangle and among the chaos we have found our routines and rhythms that work quite well for us and my kids are the happiest they have been in years.
Going to SBL has always been a pipedream of ours, something I promised my little girl we would do,"Some day" and I had never in my life thought it would be in such an amazing manner, in fact I had even despaired making it while my health held out or it was even still going on. The planning and saving up for it is on-going and with the hotel room already paid for, the account for travel set up and slowly gaining meager funds, I am feeling lighter and more hopeful that life has finally stopped being about plodding from one mission to the next and has finally become about finding the joy, in fact, they told me that our next goal is to start saving up for the British Isles after SBL, I may actually get to leave the country while still alive?! How freaking amazing is that??!