July 5: HAPPY 80th BIRTHDAY, DAD!

Yes, I know he is my father-in-law, but I have known him as family for a lot longer that I knew my own dad (He passed away when I was 13.), so he is Dad to me, most of the time.  I feel really blessed that my in-laws welcomed me with generous hearts and loving kindness from the very beginning.  Celebrating this 80th birthday with him has just been fun and will hopefully continue along that same vein all weekend!

After a morning of routine chores, we took him out to Jimmy John's for lunch.  Then we did a couple of errands, including shopping for groceries for his big party on Sunday.  It was VERY hard to buy the big "8-0" candles without his ever watchful eyes spotting them.  He thinks that the great-grandkids and I are just making cupcakes with sprinkles.  Also got him the relighting candles.  He will get a hoot out of them.  Jamie is bringing party hats, napkins, and noisemakers.

The phone has been ringing all day with people calling to wish him happy birthday, and the mailbox was full of cards from so many of his friends.  Obviously, he is a nice guy and deserving of all the good wishes.

Tonight we had our friends over for pizza on the grill and cookies with ice cream.  This was our first attempt at grilling pizza made from scratch.  Pizza is something that Dad LOVES so it was the perfect idea.  If our attempt bombed, the back-up plan was to go to the local pizza place and hope that it had some good stuff.  Our pizza turned out so good that everyone truly overindulged, but ohhhhhhhhhhhhh.........  Then we broke out the cookies - all three kinds that we made earlier this week and decided to skip the ice cream.  The wine with the pizza was delightful as well.  Nancy and I had small glasses of  Wild Plum wine from Prairie Berry Winery and Kevin and Dan had a Spanish red one.  Dad happily stuck with his water and then a lemonade.  Making the pizza with friends was a big part of the fun!!!

It is after 10:00 so normally we would be heading for bed, but right now we are waiting on our daughter and family to show up.  They are coming for a 3-day weekend to help celebrate Dad's 80th. This should be a wonderful weekend! 

Life is GOOD!