A Two-Week Birthday Celebration

Susan's birthday was two weekends ago. It was on a Sunday, but her birthday festivities started two days earlier and continued through tonight!

Fridays are usually date nights for us, and a frequent spot for us to eat on a Friday is El Sombrero, a family-owned Mexican restaurant in Dickinson. When we arrived on the Friday before Susan's birthday, she asked for a table for two--but one of the brothers who run the place saw me and directed us to a table set for eight instead. I had called him earlier to make a reservation, and I surprised Susan by inviting some of our couples friends from church to join us for an early birthday celebration.

On Susan's actual birthday, her dad and his girlfriend, JoAnn, joined us at noon for a birthday meal at Butterhorn in downtown Bismarck. Butterhorn has great brunch items--and of course we had to start with some hot butterhorns topped with butter, raspberry jam, and vanilla icing (health food). In the afternoon we enjoyed a family video call with our daughters. In the evening, I made Susan a birthday supper of sautéed scallops, cavatappi alfredo, and Caesar salad. (It was just too frigid outside to venture out for another restaurant meal.)

Tonight we combined our date night with another (belated) birthday gathering. We met Susan's "lunch bunch" (a group of her coworkers with whom she eats lunch each day and who socialize with us and their spouses outside of work) at Los Cabos, another Mexican restaurant in Dickinson. The ladies in this group always exchange birthday and Christmas gifts, so Susan got to open presents; and the servers gathered to lead the other guests in singing "Happy Birthday" to her!

(Click on any photo to enlarge it.)

I had a bouquet delivered to Susan at work on the Friday before her birthday. Our daughters had flowers delivered to her at work that day, too!

JoAnn and Roger with Susan and me at Butterhorn.

Susan and I had mimosas with our meal.

For Susan's birthday cake, I got her a variety of "bundtinis" from Nothing Bundt Cakes.

The servers at Los Cabos had Susan wear this sombrero while they led the restaurant in singing to her--and then they gave her a birthday dessert!

Buena Comida con Buenos Amigos

Tonight Susan and I went out for supper with friends: her coworkers Cindy, Naomi, and Leslie and Leslie's husband Dave. We went to Lady J's, a catering business that is open for meal service over the noon hour and select nights of the week. Tonight they were serving a buffet of Mexican food, so we decided to try it out. It was really good!

Lady J's is in the building used by the former German Hungarian Steak House, the restaurant at which we had the groom's supper before our wedding nearly 17 years ago. Lady J's catering menu looks to be quite varied, so it's not surprising that the buffet tables were stocked with a large variety of dishes: three kinds of spicy soup, nacho chips and two kinds of melted cheese, tacos with lots of fixin's, and several kinds of burritos, enchiladas, chimichangas, and fajitas. The dessert table had four or five choices, too.

We got there around 5:30 P.M. and didn't leave until 8:00 P.M. Although we did eat our fill, most of that time was spent visiting--it wasn't 2.5 hours of nonstop gluttony! We had a good time with good friends eating good food in a new (to us) restaurant to which we will be happy to return.

St. Nicholas Day Fun

Our friend Michelle opened her home to guests today for a St. Nicholas Day party starting at 4:00 P.M. and lasting into the night. Susan and I and others were invited to stop by whenever we liked, stay as long as we could, enjoy some savory snacks and Christmas baking and adult beverages and holiday music playing in the background, and visit. Because Susan and I had another engagement for the evening, we went to Michelle's close to 4:00 with some food to share and then left after about 90 minutes.

It was still a small crowd at that point, but we were thoroughly entertained by family tales told by Michelle and her brothers about having had their mother as their English teacher decades earlier. Their mom, who was one of Susan's favorite teachers, happened to be there, too, and was such a good sport as her kids gleefully shared horror stories about how much harder she was on them than on other students simply because she didn't want to appear to be favoring them. When one son received from her a lower grade than he had actually earned, he even reported her to the department chair, who brought the issue to the mom/teacher only to have her admit that she had indeed recorded an undeservedly low grade . . . just to show him that he would have to work to get a good grade from her! This they all shared with chuckles and no animosity whatsoever--surreal.

Our next engagement was the Christmas party for the faculty at the high school where Susan teaches. The group rented St. Anthony Hall for a buffet supper of sirloin tips, marinated turkey, and tasty side dishes. When we arrived, Susan and I sat with Leslie (her high school classmate and friend and now her colleague at the school) and Dave for pre-meal beverages and visiting. We were joined by our neighbors Naomi and Keith (she: Susan's colleague; he: my former colleague, now retired from the university) and by Kirk, a current paraprofessional who once was a student of Leslie and Naomi.

Besides the tasty food, the highlight of the night was definitely the opening of the gifts. The custodians in charge of party planning (yes, the janitors plan the faculty Christmas party . . .) made sure that everyone there would have a present to open and handed out wrapped gifts from Family Dollar. My gift? A precious ceramic knickknack of a little pajama-ed brown boy kneeling serenely beside his teddy bear on a gigantic pillow atop an even more gargantuan Bible that is hinged and opens to reveal hidden storage (with the capacity to hold perhaps six quarters or one large gumdrop). The jokes about my little brown boy sustained our conversation throughout the remainder of the night.

There was some visiting with other faculty members (including an outgoing administrator who became even more gregarious with each drink) and some laughing over the drawing for door prizes (significantly better than ceramic knickknacks, but none of them went to us) and some shivering as we found, on our way back to our vehicle to return home, that the temperature had dropped, as had much fresh snow. Pretty sure that no part of our evening truly honored the memory or mission of St. Nicholas, but we did legitimately celebrate, and it was truly St. Nicholas Day, so I'm thinking that it's okay to say with impunity, "We celebrated St. Nicholas Day."

What Is the Neighborhood Coming To? A Party, That's What!!

We happened to move into a pretty wonderful neighborhood, and last night's festivities helped to demonstrate that. We hosted our neighbors at our house for a neighborhood party! People came from both sides of our block, from across the street, and from the blocks to our south and east; it was quite a crowd, and it was wonderful.

Some of the first neighbors we met when we moved here were Chuck, Reba, and their kids. Chuck and Reba used to live in Cheyenne, WY, where they would have block parties occasionally, and they mentioned a while back wanting to host one here. Some weeks later they wondered if Susan and I would volunteer our home for the party, thinking our yard, driveway, and garage were big enough for an outdoor to-do (their plan is to host a winter neighborhood party in their own large, unfinished basement). So one night last week, while I hung out with my sister visiting from OR, Susan joined Chuck and Reba in canvassing the neighborhood, dropping off invitations to the party and encouraging people to attend. (Another neighbor, Ivella, took a stack of invitations to deliver to the other side of the block.)

Who would come? We had no idea. I spent yesterday mowing and watering the lawn, watering the flowers, cleaning the garage, and moving all our furniture from the veranda to the garage. Our next-door neighbors, Leo and Ivella, lent us a card table and chairs to add to our own two tables and sets of chairs and another table and chairs lent by Chuck and Reba. I strung up in the garage several strings of lights with Japanese paper lantern covers, as well as eight large battery-operated Japanese paper lanterns to match. I moved lots of flowers off the veranda and set them up about the garage (we already have numerous pots of flowers set about our driveway), and the girls helped me decorate the driveway with welcome messages and art work using sidewalk chalk.

My tool bench/work area is a set of kitchen cabinets that the previous owners must have moved out of the house during a remodel and installed in the garage, so after I packed up all my tools and moved them temporarily to the storage shed, we had that long expanse of counter top upon which to set all the food (it was BYOB and a snack to share). We provided lemonade and water (in coolers borrowed from Chuck and Reba) and had another cooler of ice for people to store their own beverages. Susan made the lemonade, a couple pans of bars, a platter of raw veggies, and two large batches of baked dips with assorted crackers to start off the snack counter.

I moved the baker's rack off the veranda into the garage with a power strip in case anybody brought food in crock pots. We used that area to house the name tags and sign-in sheet, and Chuck set up a white board on which he had drawn a map of the neighborhood so people could write their names on the house where they live: a visual aid for those wondering where the other guests were coming from.

And come they did! At 7:00 P.M. promptly, people started to arrive, lawn chairs and mini-coolers and plates of food in tow. The map was a great conversation starter, and the name tags were very useful. As it turns out, not only were we getting to know the neighbors who had lived there long before our arrival, but they were getting to know one another depite the fact that many of them had lived in the neighborhood together for many years. All the kids ran from yard to yard, playing tag and hide-and-seek and baseball and keeping themselves occupied. People ate (it turned into a veritable banquet of snacks) and drank and sat in the shade of the garage or the warmth of the setting sun on the driveway and visited and got to know one another.

Once it got dark, one neighbor walked home to get his accordian, and he played a few songs for all of us gathered on chairs on the driveway. He disappeared into the back yard for a while and then returned like a pied piper with all the children following him. They had rehearsed a song, which they then performed for the crowd on the driveway. That inspired another neighbor to walk home and retrieve his guitar, which he then played for us while those who knew the songs sang along. It was like a campfire minus the marshmallows and fire (note to self: buy fire pit for next summer).

We heard so many words of thanks for hosting the event; people were thankful for the opportunity to socialize with those amongst whom they live, to put names to familiar faces, and to have a good time without having to go far. They're all looking forward to gathering again, and Chuck and Reba are already planning for the Christmas party at their house. By midnight, the crowd had dispersed, so while Susan tended to food storage and cleanup, I cleaned up the garage and put everything back in its place (so I could shut the garage doors for the night). Our girls went home with the next-door neighbors to have a slumber party with their youngest daughter, so Susan and I took advantage of the solitude and the serene and breezy night to go for a walk around 1:00 A.M.! What a great night.

Some of the food set up on the counter in the garage. (The sheet is tacked up to cover the otherwise unsightly display of paint cans, etc.)

The new Japanese paper lantern lights with the garage light on . . .

. . . and off (much prettier).

Jim and his guitar

Rick and his accordian

Rick and the kids rehearsing in the back yard

Rick accompanying the kids for their performance on the driveway