Happy 90th Birthday Mom!

We celebrated Mom's birthday this weekend.  She turned 90!

I feel beyond fortunate to have such a sweet, close relationship with her.

She still lives alone, cooks for herself, drives and is pretty with it (aside from some memory issues that comes with being 90!).  She is also hilarious. Most of the time without even knowing she is funny.  Her accent makes her an easy target and also makes the stories she tells funnier.  She lives right down the street from my parents house, where we go every Sunday, so I get to hang out with her just about every weekend.

She is THE best cook.  Her cous-cous, red sauce, brikas, doublas, donuts, kiaikas, boulou, macroud, homeade strawberry ice cream, and meatballs were the best. My mouth is watering just thinking about all of it.  Every year when we were little, she would bake each of her grandchildren bread in the shape of a teddy bear with raisins for the eyes and nose. They were delicious and so special, we still talk about them! Rachel and I would beg to spend the night at her apartment and fight over who got to sleep next to her (I always won).  She had these old barbies and barbie van, and random toys that she kept in her closet, and we would always go in there and play with them.  She would always make us matzah with butter and sugar, and to this day, I can not eat that without thinking about her!

She has a great sense of humor, and she can make fun of herself when she doesn't hear things clearly (mostly because she had forgotten to put in her hearing aids) and doesn't understand.  She always ends a conversation with wishing you the very best of everything she can rattle off---may you G-d bless you with health and happiness, and may your kids behave for you and be healthy, and your husband take care of you and be careful, and I hope many more years of a wonderful life, and that you will be happy and...and....and she goes on and on.  It is so sweet and endearing.  She is goofy and will play crazy with the boys as they run around her and pretend to shoot her.  She of course, pretends to die. She will even grab a pretend gun and shoot back at them.  She will play games with them, sit with them at the table while they eat, and try and teach them songs she sang as a little girl.  She and Cash have a special little thing going too.  He really loves her and I find them sitting together just the two of them a lot on our Sundays together.

We started the day out at services at the synagogue for services and lunch and a cake afterwards.

 It was just family and a few friends.  We did not stay too long because the boys were acting like manics and Cash started stripping off his clothes.

After lunch we headed to my parents house to help my mom get ready for dinner. My grandmothers 3 daughters (my  mom, Carol and Marilyn) had planned a dinner for her with all her friends and family. It was really great to see all her friends come over to celebrate her. She is just the sweetest little soul.  I swear, she does not have a mean bone in her body, but she has the uncanny ability to always make you feel guilty, or bad about yourself-like any good Jewish grandmother. In a loving way she will tell me how tired I must be because I just look exhausted. Or the time she was trying to pay Rachel a compliment but it came our that it looked like Rachel was having twins and was about to pop.

All her friends came over and we all visited, and wrote down and shared our favorite memory of her.  She looked so happy! No one in the world has a mean thing to say about her.

Her sweet friend Stella that treats her like a mother, gives her mani and pedis and is just wonderful to her

The little woman in the black is her friend Marcel, they have been friends for 45 years. They met at the DPS!

My cousin Jake showing them Pokemon cards

Mom with my cousins Jared and Alana

The Nales and Lindauers pick her up every Tuesday and take her to minyan and out to dinner

When it was time for the cake, Cash was right there with her, ready to help her blow out the candles!

 And I have no idea what he was trying to explain to her, but she went right along with it!

I enjoyed every minutes of celebrating my sweet, 90 year old grandmother, aka Mom.

Halloween Weekend

We counted down Halloween in our house for probably 2 months.

Owen decided he wanted to be Chase from Paw Patrol, Cash wanted to be Hulk Smash and Eli wanted to be a skeleton.

Well, when Eli's costume came in the mail and Owen and Cash saw how cool it was and how it lit up---EVERYONE HAD TO BE A SKELETON!!! So back to the store we went to return Owen's costume (Cash was going to use the one Owen used last year) and back to Amazon we went to get two more skeleton costumes.

The next day, Eli went to school and told Ty all about how cool his costume was.  Shortly after, I got a text from his mom asking if Eli would mind if Ty got the same one because of how cool it sounded.  We were up to 4 skeletons.  Well, fast forward two weeks and my friend Becca came over with her boys, they saw his costume and we were up one more skeleton.

Note to self: it is really difficult to find your own children wearing all black in the dark with 5 matching costumes!

We had some friends over before we headed out for some pre-trick or treating dinner and drinks.

 It was impossible to get a picture of all the kids before we headed out, so this is the best we got.
Our front yard was full of people when we headed out to trick or treat!

The kids stopped a few times while we were out for a little candy  break.  We lost a lot of our group but all ended up meeting up back at the house at the end of the night.

We came back to our house and handed out candy until we ran out.  By about 8:45, we turned off the light and tried to get the kids in bed.  We had an early morning the next day. I signed up to run Run For Water and also signed up Eli and Owen to run the kids K.  With the time change that morning, everyone was up by 6 (but really 5 since we forgot to change the clocks-duh!).
I headed out early to get to the run start at 7:15 and Blaine had planned on getting there just in time for me to finish.  He forgot the boys race numbers at home and had to turn around, he got mixed up with the time and got there about a minutes after I went through the finish line!

It was finally time to start the kids K and the boys were really excited!  

Gilbert prepped all the little runners to RUN WITH JOY!

They did amazing. I was so proud of them!  It was a long distance for these little guys, but they booked it!  They each took a moment during the run to rest and then picked it right back up!

They certainly ran with joy!  It was a great family morning together!

Random October Happenings

October is always a busy and fun month!
Kiker had Track and Field day October 11.  I was able to stop by and watch the fun for the first half and then Blaine came and took over so I could go back to the hospital to be with Rachel so Hobo could leave and go home for a little while.

Our friends Will and Bradford have a Fall party every year out at the beautiful property.  Blaine had to work this year, but we couldn't miss the fun and headed out there anyway!  We also never want to pass up an opportunity to hang out with Jonah and Wes for the afternoon!

My sweet friend Salma was the pumpkin queen and made trips all around town with a car full of pumpkins dropping them off at friends houses and surprising them! It was such a sweet surprise to see her pull up!

The weather was changing and getting cooler (despite the mosquitoes still hanging around!) and the boys spent countless hours on the weekends in the backyard of my parents house playing with the most patient uncle in the entire world!

Eli and Owen started tennis lessons a few months back. Here are just a few pictures from practices from the last few months.

Cash loved the practices just as much as Eli and Owen and one of us always got stuck hitting the back back and forth with him.
I went to the Halloween performance at SHPC to watch the boys perform their Halloween songs and trick or treat from class to class.  It happened to fall on the morning of the flooding this year and the weather was insane!  We were all soaking wet by the time we got into the school.  They even had cars pulling up on the sidewalks right by the doors to get kids out of the cars.  It was crazy! They ended up closing school early because of flooding in the streets.

We made it to the Zeta Alumnae trick or treating party at the house.  The boys always look forward to it.  It was a little disappointing this year compared to years past, but I blame it on the crazy, wet weather the day before!

comparing candy

Hanging with the Dow's

I got some sweet snuggle time with this snuggle bug!

But the biggest news of the month.....Brooke Anna Johnson got ENGAGED!!!!!!!!! I could not be more excited for my sweet, sweet, old friend!!!!