Yesterday we celebrated Addie’s birthday with lunch at our house.  It was great fun being together, as usual, although we certainly missed Lindee and her family – she was home sick with a horrendous migraine.  Leesy had to leave a little bit early, since she and her youth group were feeding the homeless that afternoon, but I did manage to get a group shot before she got out the door.  Front row is Charlie, Adam, Addie the Birthday Girl holding June, Mason, Jenny, Lee, Lesley in front of Jeff.  Back row is A’s mother-in-law Bennie, Elise, Boo, and then Meg, Little Hope, Andrew, & Addie’s father-in-law Roger.  This is a fun group, I have to say 🙂

Getting ready to blow out her candles.  Good times 🙂

Friday evening Sherri and I met at Carowinds Blvd, left her car, and headed to King, to be there to help out at the annual Feed Stokes 5K race that Zollie & Renee spearhead there to raise money for their local food banks.  For the first time this year they added a half marathon to the 5k of previous races, and it was a huge, huge success.  Olivia, Sherri and I started out the morning – which was cold and rainy, by far the worst weather I can remember them having for any of the races – directing traffic in a curve at the 5K, when runners would be meeting each other head on.  Only one close call 🙂

After the race & cleaning up, which went really quickly because there were so many helpers this year, we had our traditional celebratory lunch.  Our crowd was a little smaller this year than in some years gone by, but it was still great fun – of course!  Congratulations to Zol & Ren on, as usual, a job well done.

Another fun day last Friday when Mason was at the house.  It’s been a couple of weeks, now that Addie is only working every other Friday, since he’s been there all day, so it was a big day – for me, anyway.  We spent the morning making peach cobblers.  Lindee had asked me to make something for the Bethany Elementary bake sale that was to be held during the St. Patricks Day Festival in town on Saturday.  She mentioned they’d like to have a variety of things, & I thought peach cobbler would be something different.  Mason is always a lover of the cooking, and here he is adding the baking powder to the batter.  We tested it when it came out of the oven, of course – Meg was there for a short visit to sample with us – and he said he still didn’t like it as much as the chicken parmesan he & I had made earlier – not making it nor eating it.  He did love that chicken parmesan 🙂

Then that afternoon Lee picked June up from school & brought her over to play, and we finished up the string balloons we’d started earlier.  They got as much string put on them as they wanted, & now they’re hanging from our kitchen light, dry & waiting for them to come back this week to pop the balloon inside & figure out how we’re getting it out from between the strings :-).  The kids had fun making those.

This afternoon I went to a baby shower for Addie’s best friend since first grade, Becky Anne Nivens Martin, who is expecting a new baby in May.  This one’s a boy – their little girl, McKenna, is two & a half – and the shower was a baseball theme.  It was SO cute.  I was especially taken with the baseball glove filled with Baby Ruth candy bars.  So, so cute…

What a special, special day yesterday was.  Nathan and Diane brought Mia and Daniel down for a surprise visit with Granny.  It was just so, so darling.  Here are Gran and his Great Uncle Boo meeting that sweet Daniel for the first time, while his mom looks on.

They stayed a few hours before heading back to Cary, and then that evening was the pancake supper fund raiser for the Biblical Studies Release Time in the Clover School District.  Each of the elementary schools sang.  Here is Mal performing with the Bethany Elementary group – she’s the one of the right end on the back row.  They sang four songs, I think it was, finishing up with Nothing But the Blood of Jesus.  It was just such a great day all the way around.

This week all of the schools in the area – and possibly in the entire nation, for all I know – have been celebrating Dr. Seuss week.  When I picked Mallory & Clara up from school Wednesday to go to dance, I found out it was Wacky Wednesday.  I thought they did a good job putting together their wacky looks 🙂

Hope Riordan is working on a photography project for school, and Mallory and Clara are two of her models.  Tuesday when they were at the house after school Hope came over to finish up taking pictures of them.  Here they are all dressed up & ready to hit the woods 🙂

It was a very overcast day, so the action photos I took didn’t really turn out.  The girls had a blast together, though 🙂

Sunday when we got back to Sherri’s house after church, she had us a wonderful lunch fixed.  The boys talked all the way home about what a good cook she was, and that was one of the first things they told their mom & dad when they got home, too :-).  One thing they really liked, naturally, was that Sherri let them help her use the electric knife to cut the ham.  I couldn’t get around to get a great picture of them working together on the project, but here is a little bit of Adam helping out 🙂

Saturday morning we got up & headed out the door at 6 am, to be at Martinez United Methodist Church so I could go to the Chocolate Women’s Retreat that Sherri was heading up there.  Their Uncle Gary was due to be in charge of the boys for the day, and Charlie was so excited about that that he woke up at 4:46 am.  Here they are loaded up in the car, ready to hit the road.

The boys spent the morning at Monkey Joes and McDonalds with Gary, and then that afternoon they met us back at the church, where the men of the church were all gathering to head out on a fishing trip.  One man brought his son, also named Adam, and the guys spent a great afternoon at the pond.  Thanks, Uncle Gary, for showing the boys such a great time, and for giving Sherri & me so much uninterrupted visiting time 🙂