family birthday

In this family, you don't check off your birthday until all relevant parties have had a chance to celebrate it with you! Today the Chicago young people are coming up and along with the Madison young family, and of course Ed, we are going to have ourselves a party, puffy bruised leg and all! At the end of this weekend, I will be officially 70.

The days now are cold and a tad wet, which perhaps is a shame, but hey, I'm not much of an outdoor rambler right now anyway. The key is to make the house warm and welcoming. I'd worked on that before the surgery. This morning, I need only get myself ready, which believe me, takes for-ev-er! Too, I would like the place not to look like a hospital ward. The cats are already freaked by all the additional equipment. A cane terrifies them all. The big square walker sends them flying out the door. They're okay with the ice pack machine, only because it doesn't move. But add to the decor all those bottles of pills (and a dripping ceiling!) and you really have a yourself a messy situation. So we try to fix that up a little. Flowers help!

Breakfast with Ed.

And then they are all here! From the youngest up!

I had an idea for this day. It's perhaps a touch funky, and maybe a bit out there, but I had this image: all my grandkids have a lot of Polish in them, even if they have never (yet) stepped foot in that country. What if, what if, I got them something that we value back in Poland (especially if you head away from the cities) -- what if I gave them traditional and authentic Polish folk costumes?

I'd ordered them in early March, rather blindly because the sizing is crazy different than what we have here. The little ones are not even two years old, so they got a modified version of the full garb.

And what if they all dressed up together and I could take this celebratory photo today, a photo of my partly Polish grandkids?

Yeah! 

At the farmhouse, my daughter fixes lunch and we squeeze in around the table without adding a leaf. What for, we can all fit!

In the evening we go to Sardine for our celebratory dinner. Honestly, yesterday I was thinking this was going to be tricky. I could not sit up with my leg bent for more than five minutes! But today things are looking so much rosier! A dinner out at our beloved restaurant, en famille? Yes!

And yep, there is a cake. From my beloved Madison Sourdough...

And here we all are, together, which makes me so very happy.

Thank you kids, Ed, thank you grandkids. For everything. With so much love for you all!!