Thanksgiving through Easter
Holidays were notably quiet this year. We spent Thanksgiving at home with Tyler, with whom we joined forces to cook a great meal and no fewer than two pumpkin pies and three cheesecakes. Guess we had a collective sweet tooth that day.
Christmas was very quiet, too. Alex and Amanda invited us over for dinner on Christmas Eve, the last day of our Body for Life program. Alex cooked for us (he’s an amazing cook), while we got to sit around relaxing, enjoying Amanda’s Sangria. Besides the great food and drink, we loved having a chance to see the two of them by themselves and relaxed.
New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day slid by with nary a celebration, other than to quaff a toast to each other on New Year’s Eve.
St Pat’s Day we spent separately; Chelsea had corned beef and cabbage in Lompoc CA with her dad and uncle, while I dressed up in my Everybody Loves an Irish Girl shirt (much looser on me than last year!), had green eggs by myself for breakfast, and shared a car bomb with Alex when he came over for a short visit after lunch. A car bomb at lunch made for a relaxed afternoon for me…
Easter was peaceful. Alex recently started a new job at a new restaurant (Rocco’s) so the “family” met him at his restaurant for lunch, sitting in his section, boosting his sales for the day. Chelsea and I were there, Amanda, Amanda’s brother Chuck, and Kaleena, Chuck’s girlfriend and Amanda’s longtime roommate.
It was fun to get dressed up a bit and feel so social…we go weeks without seeing anyone; suddenly being dressed up and out for lunch in a group was a whole new experience. Gotta keep those conversational skills honed.
Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day was a great one this year. I knew Alex would at least stop by, though I hadn’t heard from Paul; but I knew for sure something was up when Chelsea started having several mysterious protracted texting sessions.
Typically of Alex, I was kept in the dark till the last minute, but the wait was so worth it! My Mother’s Day treat was a movie at Cinemark in the “premier” section. That meant huge plushy gray-leather reclining seats in the front row balcony, unlimited popcorn, a bottle of wine (with real glass wineglasses), and toasted edamame beans.
That was enough of a treat, but then he invited us to dinner as well, choosing PF Chang’s. I wasn’t going to say no to that! I was really disappointed, though, as I hadn’t heard anything from Paul. Over the years Paul has tracked me down wherever I may be and wished me happy Mother’s Day, so not hearing from him was puzzling and a bit sad.
I needn’t have worried. Chelsea, Paul and Alex had cooked up a deal to have Paul, Denise and Chandler meet us at the restaurant. They will never let me live down the fact that I walked right by them as they sat in the waiting line. How was I supposed to know? At least they got a big kick out of it…
By the end of dinner I thought I’d float away on the tide of happiness. A great meal, hilarious conversation, surrounded by the ones I love the best in the whole world…how could life possibly get any better?
But it did. Like having dessert after dinner, on the way home Alex reached into the back seat and pulled out a bag. “I feel like I’m giving you a cassette tape in the age of the MP3” he told me, “but whatever”. He’d methodically and patiently hunted down two paperback books in a popular trilogy that he knew I’d like, along with one book from another of our favorite authors. It took no encouraging for me to lay my Kindle aside and plow through those books.
Then two days later Alex showed up unexpectedly with Moolenium Crunch, our favorite Bluebell ice cream, and a small box. The way he and Chelsea were smirking put me on high alert. They’d gotten together and ordered a teeny sundial shaped like a silver ring, with engravings on the side that are the settings to read the sun times. It hangs on a black cord around the neck.
I’d been admiring it in a tech press blog; I thought how fun it would be out in deserted areas on our bike trip for me to pull it out and be able to tell the time. Guess what? Not only is it beautiful, worthy of wearing as a piece of jewelry, it really works!
I won’t forget this Mother’s Day any time soon!
Chelsea’s birthday
Chelsea’s birthday was quiet but amazing. My gift to her was a matching set of sterling silver bicycle earrings and necklace, accompanied by a set of bike gloves for each of us. Now why is a pair of gloves for me to be considered a gift for her? I figured that now she won’t have to listen to me complain so much about my tattered gloves. Isn’t that quite a gift? We’re both happy with it, and she likes her badly-needed new gloves.
Alex and Amanda took us out to Grease, a really nice sit-down burger restaurant/bar in West Palm Beach related to the restaurant where he works, followed up by ice cream sundaes at their home. I think we each gained five pounds overnight!
Alex gave Chelsea some exotic tequila, along with a pre-order on her much-anticipated last book in the Eragon series, topped off by a pre-order of season three of Castle. She was one happy camper that day!