Tricia's Birthday Dinner

The Birthday Girl!

When you come from a big family, and then you have a big family, there are happily a lot of birthdays to celebrate.  Tonight we celebrated my youngest daughter Tricia's birthday.  She was 30 on Tuesday, but our dinner in her honor was tonight.  It was a small group with Tricia, her fiance Jeff, Katie, Henry and Pete, and also my sons Jeff and Joe.  I had four of my five kids and my two grandsons in one place, which is just about all I ever need, and of course, we missed Meghan (we always miss Meghan).  She and Mark are loving life in California.  Tricia's Dad Gene and his wife Kathryn were both working tonight.  It  seems impossible to find a time that works for everyone these days, so we are especially looking forward to having them join us for brunch at Katie's Easter morning.

For dinner tonight, we had chicken spiedies, a romaine salad, broccoli, and a home-made macaroni and cheese that I put together last night.  The topper was Tricia's chocolate with chocolate birthday cake.  I've been so busy with work that I had to rush home to frost Tricia's cake, which I was in the process of when she and Jeff arrived.  And then I had to wrap her gifts at the last second, searching for Scotch tape and finally getting it all done after the guest of honor arrived (!)  You'd think I'd have my act together by now, but that's just the way it is when you work all day and then try to accomplish something after work!  Anyway, it was all worth it with such a delicious and happy dinner, and I am very glad that we'll be together again in just a few days, enjoying an Easter brunch on what is supposed to be a beautiful day!

Once again,  happy birthday to my lovely daughter Tricia.  It seems like just yesterday we brought you home from the hospital.  Yesterday, plus thirty years!  xoxox

Hershey's Chocolate Cake and Frosting
(recipe on the Hershey cocoa can)

A Big Birthday and a New Adventure

This is a busy baking week. The most important baking is for my daughter Meghan's birthday. She's coming for dinner tonight, and I've baked her 30th birthday cake (chocolate through and through). Of all the cakes I bake, those for my kids' birthdays are the most important. Meghan's actual birthday is December 20, but we're celebrating tonight. For years it seemed her birthday got lost in the holiday shuffle. For that reason, I usually baked something special for her. When she was five, I baked a cake with a gingerbread girl design and decorated the whole thing in M&Ms. For one of her recent birthdays, it was a cake decorated to look like a pine bough with snow, and it became one of my favorite winter designs (it's the photo posted with this blog entry).

Meghan's birthday this year is bittersweet. She and her boyfriend Mark are leaving that very day for Long Beach, California. They're packing up their van with minimal belongings, two dogs, and a cat and heading west early Sunday morning to try California living for a while. I am optimistic for Meghan for this opportunity. Selfishly, I will miss her, and will miss knowing she is nearby. I worry about them driving across country during the winter, though they have a good plan and are sensible. Still, I'm a mom. All in all, it's a good thing and a learning experience. Her father, on the other hand, is not thrilled at her being so far away, though he is trying to get comfortable with the idea.

What an advantage it is to be young, able to pick up your life and start over simply because you can. There's no other time in her life that she'll be able to do this, I expect. Once she settles in with a job, a family, perhaps children, such options for new beginnings are not so readily undertaken. So I say, "Enjoy the adventure. Do as much as you can. Take it all in, for everything you do is an education. And miss your mother. Definitely, miss your mother. Your father will be fine, but call him now and then. Just to let him know."

Bon voyage, my Meghan.

Photo: my very own