Birthday Celebration

"Birthday Season" is here for our family. Birthdays start in September and proceed through May, with the exception of April. We had a combined celebration Sunday for Jess (September), Kristen and Sam. Sam was born on his Aunt Kristen's birthday last October. Jess is Sam's mom:)

Nine of us were here for this gathering- 3 missing from our family of 12. Ben and Lisa live in Pittsburgh and Jonathan wisely chose to stay in Milwaukee and study for an approaching crucial exam. We missed them, but did enjoy talking to Ben on the phone, catching up with news of his work at school and Lisa's new job. Several of us spoke/texted to Jonathan on the phone on Saturday as he studied in the library of the UW campus. As Dad always says, "study hard", Jonathan!

For lunch we had a variety of three soups- chili, vegetable and broccoli cheese. Pickles, crackers, cheese spread, rolls and butter along with sweet tea, peach tea and lemonade served on the side.

The soups helped warm us up on this crisp Autumn day. In the early afternoon we looked out to see a few snow flurries falling along with the leaves in the wind. Remembering last winter's record snowfall of over 100 inches, we are not wishing for an early return of winter this year!

In the afternoon, we enjoyed just being together again- some stayed around the kitchen table for a while to chat, while others moved to the living room to relax.

Little Sam napped for a couple of hours and then birthday gifts were opened and we enjoyed Dairy Queen ice cream cake. Sorry for the lack of visuals-- I was having too much fun being Grammy and forgot to snap pictures of the day, except the one of Sam opening a gift.

Of course, our main entertainment for the day was to watch Sam walk around discovering Grand-dad and Grammy's house with hallways to walk and cabinet doors to skillfully open and close (and for some reason said "salsa" each time) So cute:).

He is learning new words, which we think is adorable:) What an amazing amount of discovery and learning is going on with that little guy each day! And he is such a happy little boy- that's what is neat! Okay, I'm done for now. I'll stop reporting his every move:)

I also want to say how much we love and wish Kristen and Jess, our beautiful daughters-in-law, Happy Birthday! We celebrate their lives, and the blessings that they are to our family! We love you!