The Par-tay: a lovely evening full of lots of food, family and friends, and children running around in their underwear.
This really sums it up the evening quite nicely. (Flickr by clicking the image.)
Em had an accident and got her jeans wet, so she was going without. Not that it really mattered, because the majority of the people in attendance had seen her in potty training action when she went commando whenever it was permissible - aka whenever she was in the house. As is the custom, Brian’s family and our family got together to celebrate with a few close friends. This year it was our family’s turn to host, so everyone came to my mom and dad’s for Stouffer’s lasagna, three bean salad, cranberry applesauce cherry jello, mock potato salad, and pasta salad. Pat had a very busy week at the gift shop, so it was a very relaxed gathering. Even the desserts were made ahead and frozen. There was some lemony thing with a graham cracker crust full of creamy goodness and one of my sister’s favorites, Strawberry Yummy. Quite descriptive, no? Heath has to avoid dairy at the moment because her nursing child seems to struggle with the lactose so there was no cake allowed. And, for the curious, Strawberry Yummy consists of egg whites, strawberries, sugar, and a pecan/butter crust. It is very light and fluffy and would probably work well as a body scrub - especially if you could get someone to lick it off of you.
Anyway, we ate dinner and then H and B opened their gifts. It was a cash kind of birthday. I didn’t even get out to buy them cards since the Hallmark shop is no longer in business here. I simply wrote them checks and noted that I’d send a nice card later. Who wants to get a crappy card? Brian got a check for iTunes and Heath got a check for Starbucks/Tootsie Rolls/Jelly Bellies/or whatever else she wanted. It thought it was a really nice touch to put in the memo what gift certificate I would have gotten them if I had been on the ball.
I made an early evening of it, but I shouldn’t have, because evidently one of our friends, Tim, was in rare form. I could not sleep for all of the outbursts of laughter looming from the main level of the house. That is one thing I really like about my immediate family - we laugh a lot when we get together. (Years and years of therapy allow us to enjoy ourselves, I guess.)
The kids had a good time too. For more images of the weekend, Flickr below.
