Full Day

Yesterday was a full day, mostly celebrating with family. I started off the morning with a couple of hours of yard saleing...it was to hot to have done more anyway but that was all I had available. I didn't get much of note and nothing to sell on Ebay but it was still a nice way to spend 2 hours.

Then it was off to the park to celebrate Nolan's first birthday. He'd turned one on July 10th but many of us were in Florida last weekend so today was the day for us to honor our little guy. He'd learned a few tricks since the last time I saw him, too. He could walk with the support of one of his push toys, not especially steady but still pretty darned good. He seemed to know he was doing something special because he smiled to our encouraging and complimentary comments.

Natasha's brother, Sean, and his wife arrived with their baby girl, Aislin, who is just a couple of weeks younger than Nolan. They are a very close family and it's so cute to see the two little cousins together. All told, there were 15 at our little party.

Natasha had made a chocolate creation for Nolan's cake and was quite upset that some of it melted on the drive to the park. It still looked pretty good but turned out to be way too sweet for me to eat. Nolan loved it, though. They sat him on the table and let him go at it with his hands. Natasha is very strict about what he eats so this was his first go at useless calories. It didn't take him long to discover that junk food tastes good. He made quite a mess trying to shove fistful after fistful of cake into his mouth, shaking with anticipation.

We were also given the news that Natasha is pregnant again and the baby is due some time in March. We're hoping for a girl but another beautiful boy like Nolan wouldn't be turned away, either. Natasha had a miscarriage just a couple of months ago so we're hoping all will go well this time. Nick is certainly taking a large responsibility on his 26 year old shoulders but he seems quite happy about it.

We had been at the park for about 1 1/2 hours, nicely ensconced in the shade of one of the park's pavillions when a man walked up and asked how long we'd be there. He and his family had rented the pavillion for their own party! We had no idea that you had to rent the pavillions to use them so we apologized and cleared our stuff away quickly. It was near time for us to go home anyway. By the way, the rental cost for the pavillion was $75 so I guess we got a bargain with our hour and a half party.

At 3 P.M. I drove over to Faye's and joined her and Gary to drive down to Linda (60th birthday) and Les's (40 year anniversary) party. This is another faction of our family. One day I'll have to count the number of people in our whole extended family but I'll bet it's way into the high hundreds and growing all the time. We stayed until about 5 P.M. and then went home to stay.

It had been a lovely day spent with family. How lucky we all are!