Wonderful birthday weekend.

I was a little nervous about this weekend as it was Edda’s birthday on Sunday and Jeremy wasn’t going to be around. Years ago, I made Jeremy promise that he wouldn’t be gone on Edda’s birthday because I’d feel blue about just how different Edda was from other 8, 10 or 12 year olds, so I was kind of ready to feel that way as well this year (we did talk through Jeremy’s absence and he could have been home, but I thought spending time with Vince on the left coast was more important this year) but I didn’t feel that way at all this year. I felt gloriously loved and Edda felt loved and was so happy this entire week.

Alan, Hai and Viv came – last minute almost – to spend the night on Saturday to squeeze in cherry blossom viewing on Sunday. And I had the best time – they came in late on Sat night (like almost 10 pm) and we stayed up talking and looking through old college photos until almost 1 am. And then the next day, we had a celebratory breakfast with Edda for her actual 20th birthday.

I do get nervous about hosting people without Jeremy because I rely so heavily on him for the cooking/food part, but I think after years of watching Jeremy, I was able to pull this off without too much trouble and I bought all the things I wanted for breakfast – bagels, beautiful fruit and I made all the eggs – cheesy and hard boiled. Jeremy has a very involved and complicated coffee set up (not a Keurig) – so I had to get him to email me instructions (because I don’t drink coffee because all of you coffee drinkers are addicted and can not function without a cup and if there was a zombie apocalypse and they stole all the coffee, I would be fine and all you would be going through withdrawal and acting like the exact zombies that were trying to take over the world) and in the morning, I pulled Alan aside to the setup and said – OK, you’d like some coffee and here’s Jeremy’s set up, does any of this look familiar to you? And we happily stumbled through making a single cup of coffee.

They wanted to get up and out early, but they didn’t get going until almost noon and not after 5 minutes that they left, Nat showed up with this elegant, handmade strawberry cake.

And we all ate cake together for lunch! And Nat said the sweetest thing – she’s about 6 months pregnant as she said she met her husband and is going to have a baby all because Edda brought her here to the US. And it’s true, Edda brings people together and I hope it continues for-evah. And then Ning stopped by with some flowers and we chatted about an upcoming trip we are taking together soon!

I tucked in a run on the treadmill and then prepped for Sunday night dinner (I made Mexican lasagne and rice and beans) and Colleen brought this enormous beautiful cake (to feed 20…we were only 7) and it was a lot of fun to chat and talk and they left a 8 pm.

I have a bunch of birthday hats including this one which Christine wore at dinner. And we laughed and sang together and it was a lot of fun. Thank you all for making it such a special day for Edda and me.