Brother's Fifth Birthday (plus a concert, the temple, ring shopping, St. Patrick's Day and Celebration of the Egg)

Yep, that's right.  All three celebrations in 48 hours! Are we crazy? Absolutely!

Schedules are a bit tight now that Baby is in school as are the girls (still!) and John spends many weekends working in PA, so we found one weekend near Brother's birthday where we could throw his fifth birthday bash!  I seriously kinda love that our family has decided that the fifth birthday is a major big deal, and I'm excited for it to continue with the other future grand babies.

Rebecca and Ethan asked if we could do a "Bluey"-themed birthday, and I said sure even though I had no idea what Bluey is.  Well, for future generations, I hope that Bluey is still a tv program, because it's about the best program (for kids or adults) that I've ever seen.  Rebecca said she'd take care of the games and decorations if Hannah would hang the decorations, and Glo was in charge of the invitations, and I was in charge of the cake and balloons.

In addition, we needed to hold Celebration of the Egg because the girls wouldn't be able to fly back for another weekend.  We just came up with a game plan and hoped for the best!

The babies came in on Thursday night.  I happened to have a gig that night with the middle school choir I accompany.  It was Choral Calvacade held at Pioneer HS (which I attended), and it's always a sentimental journey for me to return.  I had a few moments alone in what is now some new rehearsal room, but I found a plaque for Ms. Quigley hanging on the wall, and I saw the harp case for my old harp.  I wrote her a letter years ago when she retired, but I don't think Ms. Quigley ever really appreciated what she did for me in allowing me to join the orchestra.  There I was, a tenth grader who played the piano really well, and my viola friend, Nivi Hora, told me I should join the orchestra.  In fact, she even set up the appointment for Ms. Quigley to meet me and hear me play.  In an unexpected move, Ms. Quigley told me then and there that I could be part of the orchestra, and for the next three years, there was never a season when I wasn't involved in at least one piece the orchestra was playing.  And she was the one who encouraged me to learn harp so that I could have even more involvement.  But it was sitting on the side of the orchestra rehearsals that fostered my latent love of composers, and music identification abilities and camaraderie with the fellow musicians.  In simple terms, joining the orchestra changed my life.  So to be back on stage where I played Saint-Saëns' second piano concerto and to relive those formative times, it's very touching.

I ended up playing the djembe as well as the piano for the evening.  

John, however, was not at the concert, but was working our normal shift at the temple.  Ethan and Rebecca had tried to schedule initiatory sessions, but something happened with Ethan's where he couldn't get in.  But John, who had been assigned to be an initiatory patron, walked out into the waiting room, changed clothes with Ethan in the waiting room bathroom, and watched the babies while Ethan went in.  Ethan is still talking about the fact that his dad can fit into his son's clothes and who-the-heck-else has a dad who can do that?

And this picture is just a piece of heaven.

Glo arrived on time after midnight and I drove her home.

The next day, Ethan and Glo headed to do baptisms at the temple.  I have recently found a bunch of German family, and I felt like they would appreciate someone saying their names correctly.  I heard later from Sister Jones, the temple matron, that she went in to watch the session when she saw my kids were in there, and she said Ethan was amazing in how smoothly he said the names and performed the baptisms.  Yes, I am so proud of my children!

Meanwhile, Rebecca and I cooked the meatballs that we had shaped the night before for my monthly mom's luncheon.  I didn't think anyone would eat them, but in the end, there were only three left so I count that as a victory!  And it was so nice to be with Erbecky at my luncheon, learning about conflict resolution from a friend of mine.

After that, Glo had shopping to do for Brother and for CotE so we spent the afternoon driving around Ann Arbor, finding all kinds of fun things.  And Glo had another request:  she wanted to go engagement ring shopping!

Glo has found the man of her life.  I can hardly even believe that I can actually write that, but it has finally happened.  He hasn't proposed yet, but she wanted to be prepared about rings (and honestly, I should be MORE prepared to answer his questions about rings, am I right?)  I thought we would start out basic by looking at the mall, and let me tell you, having been given jewelry by John for the last 20 years, mall jewelry isn't very impressive.  But I didn't want her expectations to be too high or out of Gordon's budget.  Eventually we ended up going to Novi Jewelers, the place she wanted to go from the start.  It's our hometown jeweler, run by an Armenian/Syrian couple, and their jewelry is unbelievable.

There was no comparison, and after an hour, Glo had picked out a couple of rings that she liked, one of which had a $13,000 diamond in it....

Hannah flew in that night, and there's nothing like Hannah hugs!  Everyone was just so happy to see her.  We prepped for the next day.

John had to teach a "women's health" class at a stake Relief Society function Saturday morning (one that I had turned down when asked to help because of our big weekend, go figure...), but it gave us time to get ready for everything.  Finally, it was time to celebrate Brother. 

We all got dressed in our Bluey t-shirts.  I tried really hard to match everyone with the right character or situation.  While I think I hit the nail on the head with Glo, she wasn't too thrilled with hers.... 

 

 

 

We watched some Bluey episodes and then played some Bluey games.  We had a Bluey dance party.  We had Bluey ice-cream cake.  We played Pass the Parcel, and we played Lucky's dad's version where only one person wins...who was Glo.  She won Wyatt, the frog squish mallow!  It was so fun.  

 

And Brother got lots of fun gifts from a family who knows him too well! ;-)  And Glo took a nap.

 

Brother had requested pizza for dinner, so we headed to Buddy's...which seems appropriate considering how often Ethan calls Brother "Buddy".

Home for birthday cake!

Then, Glo, Hannah, and I had a special surprise for Brother (and the family!).  I give full credit to Glo for staying up until 2 a.m. the night before getting six different drones ready and charged--I just had the idea, and Hannah just helped us pack them all up and carry them out to the car.  We drove to the church without anyone else knowing what was happening, carried everything in and then unveiled it all.  I had bought drones for Baby and Brother that had a 20 minute charge on each battery and that are easy to manage.  I probably should've bought them for all of us ;-) To their credit, Ethan and Glo had the Star Wars drones up and fighting each other rather successfully.  We had also brought Nerf guns, and when drones were charging, there were Nerf bullets flying everywhere!  It was a great ending to a very fun day!

The next day was Sunday, the day that everyone was leaving, but we still needed to have Celebration of the Egg!  We went to church for choir practice, and the girls and I stayed through sacrament meeting, but we booked it out of there afterwards to get home to make the food for Easter dinner (thankfully, Glo had made Frog Eye salad the night before).  I sure love my girls.  I'm so thankful that I get to be part of their tribe, and that they never leave me out of their fun.  And I couldn't resist taking a picture of Hannah trying to salvage our melted ice-cream cake that couldn't withstand the sunshine on the deck where we had left it overnight because there was no room in the garage fridge.  

Despite buying five dozen eggs, we didn't really have time to do anything more than eat Easter dinner and hunt for eggs.  And after the hunting for eggs, it's always the prize table.  This year, Glo made out like a BANDIT although I think the prizes were actually very evenly distributed.

 

And then everyone packed up their goodies and left.  The girls left on their planes at almost the same time so they went through security together (the frog-eye salad that I had packed for them got flagged, and they had to convince TSA that it was more a solid than a liquid), and the babies drove back to Dayton.  I picked up my pickup truck for the next day.

Seriously, do we ever stop?