my mom's 60th...

recently, my mom turned 60.
my sister and i worked for months contacting her friends, family, and coworkers to ask them to write letters for her birthday.  our goal was to collect a total of 60 letters.  we gathered them up, numbered the envelopes, tied the bundle with ribbon, and put them all in this box.

my aunt was kind enough to let us use her house for the party.  my mom threatened to murder us all if we had a surprise anything, so we told mom we were going to my aunt's for a birthday dinner.  

        

 

my sister and i invited more people than mom knew about...we figured she'd forgive us.  unfortunately, (or fortunately for our lives), most folks were busy (halloween, homecoming, football, etc.), but my aunt carol and uncle doug were able to come in all the way from canton, which was truly the biggest and best surprise.

after mom recovered from the shock of seeing her brother and sister-in-law, we sat down for some yummy food.  then, to kick off the party, my aunt vicky "roasted" my mom.  my mom's rather notorious for doing, ummmm, flaky things.  like wearing her shirt inside out. frequently.

here's mom in her "best friends" sash, giving her best pageant wave.

mom's boyfriend surprised her with a guitar.  this is all a pretty new development for mom...this whole i-want-to-play-the-guitar thing.  but her boyfriend plays in a band, so he jumped on the chance to support her musical curiosity.

then, we all settled in for the much-anticipated letter reading.  we weren't really sure if mom would read the letters out loud or would just glance through them and read them later.  she opted to read them out loud.  all of them.  and i'm so glad she did.  it was so much fun to hear the memories and opinions of her friends and family. 

some were serious and touching.

some were funny.

and some were downright hysterical.

of course, that could have just been the wine talking after we turned mom's ability to guess the identity of the letter writer into a drinking game.

all in all, i would say her party was a success.  we had a small group of family and some of her closest friends, and i really think it was perfect just the way it was.  i haven't laughed so hard in a long time, and i'm glad we were able to make mom's 60th birthday something everyone will remember.

happy birthday mom!

we love you.

in the past six months...

someone turned 10 and had a carnival birthday party

 

we took a trip to canton and visited candy apple's...i love my family.

we took our 2nd family vacation...to florida.

where we surprised the girls with a visit to disney...

then we extended our vacation...to pigeon forge, tennessee

here we met up with a group of our best friends and their families.

where we risked our lives on the "ski lift"...and counted the number of lost flip flops to distract ourselves from the heights.

after settling in back home, we endured a CRAZY hail storm...

i got to play with 3 month old twins.

we made it to a couple of red's games and spent several days setting up my new classroom.

 

someone got pink streaks in her hair...

for her 7th birthday which was, of course, a pink theme.

 

i made it to my first ever in person buckeye's game.

got my hair chopped.

rallied with my community to try to pass a desperately needed levy (which didn't pass, and now we're all devastated)

made time to hang out with my sister and some of my best friends (no, we didn't intend to look like the cast of hocus pocus)

we hosted our 7th annual haywood hayride.  where we are notorious for picking out pumpkins that we forget to carve.

and, of course, there was some trick-or-treating.