Anyway, Momma thought it would be a good idea this year, since 90% of our family is in town, to have our family dinner for Viv's birthday, rather than trying to coordinate C'mas Eve or Day plans. Momma made a delicious, fabulous, melt-in-your-mouth, maple turkey (so good!), and we had sweet potato souffle, Momma's stuffing, Mic's salad, homemade cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, lots of gravy, and (of course) lots of fun family time!
Events of note during dinner:
Michael bit the rim off his [crystal] glass.Bethany is really funny when she's pregnant.Giulia really likes to toast with fancy [crystal] glasses.Momma makes the best maple turkey ever. Yum!
Viv wanted a lemon cake for dessert (I know, kinda strange, but you gotta accomodate the birthday girl, right?) so I made her one. I also made a nice lemon butter cream frosting. As far as lemon cakes go, it wasn't too bad :)
After dessert was, of course, presents. All the little kids were kind enough to "help" Aunt Vivian open her loot. Momma and Daddy got her a lovely cordial glass set with a decanter (though when Viv pulled it out of it's bag Taylor shouted, "A bong!" which was hilarious--you should have seen Viv's face. If the present had had a tag on it (To Viv Love Mom) she would have laughed it off, but the horror: "Oh no! Did Taylor and Annie really give me a bong for my birthday?! What are my parents going to think?").
It was a great evening. We enjoyed spending some quality family time--even clean up was fun! I realized that I miss my family a lot... However, I think I can say (without fear of criticism) that I don't want to "go back" to when we were all living at home together. I think that's largely because, as we grow as a family, it's much more fun to return and be together again, with spouses, children, new interests and knowledge, and the ability to reminisce about all the fun times we had as kids. One is stuck with the family one is given--and I'm very blessed to be stuck with mine :)
-----[After presents, we had a surprise for Momma and Daddy. My oldest sister was inspired to create a Night Before Christmas book "at Grandmama's house" for my folks. We have been working on it since August, revising the original poem to be more specific to our family, taking pictures, formatting the book, and finally editing all the text and ordering it. It was a lot of work, but it turned out so well! We presented it to Momma and Daddy and Momma read it out loud to us all. :) (I think we got video of most of it, so if any of you are interested, I'll try to post the videos sometime.) The little kids, of course, were terribly excited to see their own faces in the book :) And the book was fun to put together, too. Thanks to all my siblings for helping make one of the greatest presents we've given to Momma and Daddy!]-----
And so, HAPPY BIRTHDAY Vivian! We love you a million-billion-six!
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