Birthday Fun

Hi everyone... I hope this day finds you happy and well.

Just wanted to drop in to share some pictures with all of you. As I had mentioned in my post on Saturday, my mother Velda turned "75" on the 18th of October and my siblings and I hosted a birthday party for her. The party turned out great with lots of good food and fun. The skies were sunny and the temperature was around 60 degrees. The only downside was that the winds were very gusty so it was a little chilly being outside, but all in all, we could not have asked for a nicer day for the party. Living in Minnesota like we do, we were just thankful it wasn't snowing !!

We ended up with approximately 70 guests throughout the afternoon. Some were family, some were friends, some were neighbors and many of them were families that my Mom used to do daycare for. She has been doing daycare for over 35 years and is still at it. She still babysits her 3 grandchildren (my younger sisters children) and she also has 2 other kids that she watches. It keeps her very busy but she loves it.

With many of the old daycare families, it has been close to 10 years since we had seen some of them. The kids stopped coming to my Mom's for daycare around the time they started kindergarten or first grade (age 5-6) and they are now in high school. Some of the other families that we have kept in close contact with have kids even older. Kids in college, kids graduated from college and working, kids who are getting married and one who even has 2 children of his own. It was such a treat for my Mom to see the kids after all this time and to see what fine young adults they have turned out to be.

Some of kids has such funny stories to tell. One of the boys who is now 26 and is getting married next month was saying how strange it seemed to be back at my Mom's house and how much smaller the house seems now than it did when he was younger. He also saw an old "football" shaped toy box that my Mom still has after all these years and he said he remembered crawling inside of it when they would play hide and seek. He definately would not fit inside of it now :)

I wish I could have taken more pictures to share, but I was so busy visiting with all of the guests that I only ended up with a few pictures from the party. Here are the ones I did manage to take...

This first picture was taken before the party. It is a picture of my adorable nieces and nephew who were supposed to be helping us make one of the desert salads, but like most children, they were more interested in sneaking and eating some of the cut up apple pieces that were supposed to be going into the desert than they were in actually helping.

This next picture shows my Mom visiting with some of her friends (my Mom is the one in purple sweatshirt wearing the sunglasses..)

A few pictures of some of the party guests. There were many more guest than what you see here. Some were inside, some were outside in the front yard under the tent and some were in the garage where they were protected somewhat from the winds.

A picture of the yummy birthday cake decrated with lovely fall colored flowers. There was quite a bit of cake leftover and we are still eating it...

And one final picture. This last picture has to be one of my favorites. It is a picture of my Mom surrounded by several of the kids she used to babysit. Several others had been at the party earlier in the afternoon, but had already left before we were able to get this picture, so unfortunately they were not included. The kids are all grown up now!!! The little toddler in the picture is the younger son of one of the boys my Mom used to babysit.

We all had such a fun day celebrating my Mom's 75th birthday and I know it will be a day that she will never forget. It meant the world to her that so many of her old daycare kids were able to come to the party and help us celebrate her birthday.

Thanks for visiting today. Come back and visit again soon.