Edda’s pancake breakfast – 14 years old.

I’m in Ann Arbor, MI in a Hyatt about three miles from campus & my view out of my window is a lovely Burger King.  Edda is watching cartoon network, the boys are out to find the closest Whole Foods to pick up some fruit & other fixings for lunch.  It’s always a challenge to get enough fiber on a road trip.  God, we are so old – worried about fiber intake.  lol.  Anyways, I have a few minutes and a good strong hotel wifi (some hotel wifi just suck, not even worth hopping on), so here’s the blog post.

Sunday, we had Edda’s birthday pancake breakfast.  It’s always exhausting in a happy way, very much like your own wedding where I have to be intensely social for 4-6 hours and all your social circles converge in one setting.  Some friends we see only once a year at this party, some people are in our regular weekly social scene so it’s all mixed.  Jeremy & I have been through this whole thing together many times so that the responsibility roles are already pre-determined and we don’t have to fuss too much about the planning, we just focus solely on execution.

Lauren made this beautiful cake for the party, a gift for Edda & us – I swear, her cakes get more and more beautiful every year.

I thank Soojung for taking photos during the whole party –  I’ve not been in a photo mood for a little while.

Jeremy’s pancake/bacon routine has been refined over the years.  The bacon gets made the night before so we don’t have a smoky house the day of.  The pancake recipe is from the Joy of Cooking and is made overnight so that the buttermilk gets to do it’s own magic and they are thin.  Jeremy has the semi-automatic pancake batter dispenser so all the pancakes are round and equal sized.  And he has a blueberry compote recipe that everyone seems to like more than the maple syrup.

Soojung snapped this photo – which I’m grateful for even though Charlotte’s eyes are fluttering closed – her smile is there.  Charlotte performed our wedding ceremony and just happened to be in town from LA for other reasons, so she could stop by!  She saw our wedding photo with her in it in the front hall of the house.  <3 <3

Our girls:

Every year, this party reminds me that I’m not alone with Edda’s diagnosis.  It was so hard the first five years after Edda’s diagnosis, I think not a single day passed without tears or feelings of anguish and sadness and I thought I would never recover from it, but now, I’m much more at peace with it all.  I think I’d even be ok celebrating Edda’s birthday on our own now, which was so terrible for me when Edda was younger.  Edda has a cousin, Sarah, whose birthday is within a few weeks of Edda’s and who we’d see most weeks at Sunday night dinner and I remember so much pegging her experiences with Edda’s experience and saying, ah, Edda would/should be doing this or wearing that or meeting this person or learning this thing, especially around their birthdays.  But this birthday month, Sarah is off in Paris on her own & Edda is at home and I didn’t even think of Edda possibly living this other Paris life until Jeremy mentioned it to me.  Not that I wouldn’t love Edda to be in Paris on her own this spring break, but that I’m ok with Edda as her own person doing her own thing and living her own life.  She is happy, she is love, she is an extension of me and of us, our family.


The usual suspects (minus Laura who was off on spring break already!)