Birthday Five!

Monday the 14th was my medicare and concessions birthday! When you reach my age you should celebrate for more than a day and as I write this post I’m on my 5th day of celebrating! Today I’m sharing 5 wonderful birthday encouragements I received.

(1) Dear and I were able to celebrate with the B.C. Mennonite Girls and their husbands on Sunday in Bellingham, Washington for brunch/lunch. The British Columbia girls came across the line. It was enough for me to celebrate over a meal but they showered me with gifts, too. These girls have been such a blessing in my life and I thank God regularly for each of them. I received many wonderful encouragements in the cards they gave me.

(2) On my actual birthday we met our kids on the western side of the Cascades for dinner. Our middle son and his bride live 5-1/2 hours away so they couldn’t join us. Dan called me before dinner to wish me a happy birthday. I love the cards I got from my kids with a good page full of words that always mean so much to me.

Josh and Laura gifted me Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life and a Peter Rabbit bunting kit. They know I love all things Beatrix Potter. Katie made that card and wrote a page full of thoughts that blessed me dearly.

This same six were together last year for my birthday. I forgot to take a photo this year.

(3) These two are my youngest brother’s kiddos and they are my youngest niece and nephew. They called and sang happy birthday to me. They live in Texas.

(4) My dear old pop called to wish me a happy birthday. He lives with my oldest sister in Southern California. We talked about the jigsaw puzzles I sent him and I thanked him for the cold hard cash he sent me. This black and white photo is taken in the 50’s during a camping trip probably at Big Bear in the San Bernardino mountains in Southern California. I’m the one with the buster brown hairdo and my oldest sister Kathy is standing. Jigsaw puzzles have become my pop’s favorite thing to do again at 92 soon to be 93 to pass the hours away. He reminded me again that he prays for me every day.

(5) I received many birthday wishes on Facebook and one of my dear old friends from junior high/high school messaged me and her sentiments made me cry. Another dear friend called on my birthday morning and expressed her wishes and love for me and I cried again. Good tears…

I’m writing this post from our hotel room in Vancouver B.C. where Dear and I continue to celebrate my birthday with an overnight trip. Vancouver is about a 2-1/2 to 3 hour trip from our home in Washington State. It’s always fun to cross the border into another country where English is spoken! Tomorrow we will take a ride on the hop on hop off trolley to take in much of what this grand city has to offer before we head home. I’ll come around to visit you all when we get home…

Linking up with Amy for Five on Friday at Love Made My Home and with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story for Friday’s Fave Five.

Susanne’s daughter is getting married next weekend so I’m wondering if she’ll even have time to post for Friday’s Fave Five…

Thank you ladies for hosting!

B is for Birthday Blessings!

Two of our sons and our new daughter-in-law have birthdays in January (15, 16, 19) along with a nephew, brother and niece (16, 22, 25). On Friday night last we had an early birthday dinner celebration for our oldest, Josh.

Since we were having a couple Russian dishes for the main meal the table was set in a Russian theme.

We had Loppsha (Russian Noodle Soup) for our starter.

Our main dish was Golubstzi (phonetic spelling of the Russian pronunciation) for cabbage rolls. This photo is from another time we had this dish. I forgot to take a new photo on Friday night.

Our son and daughter in law were celebrated in Northeastern Washington, too. We couldn’t be there but they sent us this photo from their celebration with their Birthday Cookie!

For our boys, our dil and the rest of our family who have birthdays in January we pray this special blessing from the Lord…

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Numbers 6:24-26 (ESV)

I’m linking up to ABC Wednesday started by Mrs. Nesbitt and administrated by Roger and a team of volunteers. Thank you!

Celebrating Together…

We came together on Sunday morning to celebrate Dear and my 41st wedding anniversary and our dear daughter in law’s birthday at Palisade Restaurant in Seattle. Our daughter Katie has a birthday at the end of the month so we started her celebration, too.

Have you seen these great nail wraps from Jamberry? Katie added these Christmas wraps on her nails for December.

Four of our six were able to celebrate together. We missed having Dan and Jamie with us but a 6 hour drive is a little tough to make especially when there is a snowy mountain pass between us.

Love these faces!

Forty one years together that we are thankful to God for.

This was a first for Dear and Me! Neither of us had ever had a Santa photo taken before!

We didn’t take our kids for Santa photos either. We all had fun taking one this year since Santa and Mrs. Claus were in the buffet room at Palisade! Speaking of the Brunch Buffet…it was amazing. I think one of my favorites was the Prime Rib Hash…

The views from Palisade are fabulous. Can you see the Space Needle?

Zoom, zoom…

We really had a wonderful weekend. Now we are full speed ahead on our Christmas preparations! We don’t have the tree up yet but I’m done with the Christmas cards except for two illusive addresses…

How’s it going at your house?

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage on their site. All my photos that I stored and uploaded from that site are now big ugly black and grey boxes with a message to pay big bucks to get them restored to my blog. It will take me a long time to restore thousands of posts.

B is for Birthdays!

January is a big birthday month at this old house. Our oldest son was born on January 19th and his younger brother arrived two years later on January 16th. My younger brother was born on January 22nd and my youngest niece, Hope, was born on January 25th.

I set Joshua’s birthday table around a Washington state sports theme. Since we were celebrating the night before the NFC championship game here in Seattle I added some Seattle Seahawks touches to our Seattle Sounders Soccer themed table.

The Seahawks and the Sounders have similar team colors which made it easy and fun.

Our boy was happy with the table setting, the Ribeye steaks and his special request dessert. We had such a good time celebrating Josh.

Josh and Laura gifted me these beautiful illustrated ABC verse cards at Christmas and I’ll share the verse for letter B, too.

On Tuesday you can click on over for more ABC Wednesday posts on the letter B. Thank you to Denise Nesbitt who started this meme and to the team of bloggers who manage it every week.

March Moments

I’m joining Cheryl at Thinking About Home in Gathering the Moments.

At the end of each month she offers a link up for anyone to add their post on gathering the moments of the month. How amazing it is to look back and see all the events that happened in 31 days. March is my birthday month which added a lot to the moments…

March brought flowers once again in the yard.

The opening of the MLS Soccer season and a 90th birthday celebration on the 8th of March. On March 11th Katie and I celebrated her and Andrew’s 3rd wedding anniversary. Andrew is serving our country in Afghanistan. Hopefully this will be the last anniversary for many years that they spend half a world apart.

March brought some traveling adventures, too. Katie and I visited Snoqualmie Falls and then Dear, Katie and I traveled to Eastern Washington on my birthday (March 14th) to spend the weekend with our middle son.

It’s fun to visit Dan’s country world. We had a nice meal out to celebrate my birthday. This would be one of three different celebrations I was treated to.

March brought the Mennonite Girls Can Cook class on preparing Paska and an Easter meal at Lepp Farm Market in Abbotsford, B.C. Katie and I traveled across the border to be part of this event. It was nice to start thinking about Easter.

Lots of good food was consumed in March!

Last night we were able to enjoy my third birthday celebration with Josh and Laura. We caught up on our lives over a great meal at Wild Ginger in Bellevue, Washington. I’ll share more about our time later and the meaningful gifts they gave me.

It’s time for the sun to set on March.

What highlights did March bring your way?

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Tag Archives: Birthday Celebrations