Patrick's birthday is this coming Tuesday, and today, his parents invited us over for Sunday dinner to celebrate his birthday early. It's been a hectic week after coming back from vacation last week. None of our Christmas decorations are up yet. There is a lot of stuff to clean up and put away before putting up the new tree.
It was nice to see their Christmas decorations up, including their tree. Patrick's dad has been feeling better, his clavicle healing up nicely, so he was able to haul out everything and put them up. Eric especially enjoyed looking at their tree, so I thought I would document it by taking a picture of him next to their tree. Notice that Eric is wearing his Jiu-Jitsu medal again, three weeks after he won first place at the tournament. At first, Grandma thought it was a new medal, but no, it wasn't.
Grandpa grilled steaks for us, and Grandma made the fixings--caesar salad, sweet potato fries, and corn. Patrick really enjoyed having someone else grill some yummy steaks for him so he doesn't have to do all the work. Grandma also bought two of these chocolate mousse type cakes and put the special "50" candles on one of them. I didn't get an actual picture of Patrick with this cake, but we got to take home the second cake to have on Tuesday for Patrick's actual birthday, so maybe I'll get a photo then. I took a video instead. There was extra cake because Alex and I didn't have any. After all, it's better to have too much cake than not enough!
I took a picture of Grandma and Grandpa getting the cake ready in the kitchen after we had finished with dinner. They seemed like they were trying to be secretive, huddling in the kitchen with the cakes. They had some trouble opening the plastic container of the cakes, so Patrick sent me in there to help them out. Grandpa got it open by himself as I walked in. Grandma then gave him actual matches to light the candles with. That's when I snapped this photo because I thought it was so cool that Patrick's parents were still doing their best to make his birthday special, even his 50th! Grandpa reversed the candles (0-5 instead of 5-0) so Grandma had to fix them after he had already lit them.
We all had a great time, as usual. Alex hasn't been able to come with us a lot of the other times we've visited them, because he usually had lacrosse or some other activity going on, so it was nice to have him with us.
Patrick was trying to stand on his tiptoes to be taller than Alex, and then Natalie also tried to stand on her tiptoes to be taller than Patrick. They were goofing off and having fun. I took the opportunity to snap a picture of Patrick with his kids during his birthday celebration. I try to do that every year to see how the kids have grown. Alex started leaning on Eric's head and looked away, not really wanting a picture of himself, as usual. Grandma snapped some pictures also.
It's back to another hectic week tomorrow!
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