birthday and holiday goodness
My rather large family came together over Christmas in St. Louis to celebrate not only the hoildays this year, but also my birthday.
I remember Christmastime fondly from my childhood so when the siblings asked me where we should get together for the party, I told them at home at Christmas would be wonderful instead of getting together elsewhere at a time distant from my actual birthday. So everyone got home by Sunday night and we started with a party over at my parents' retirement apartments. This was just the family, but that is still 25+ of us when we all get together, so it was not a truly small event.
My three sisters who live in St. Louis were there of course with their families. Then brothers were in town from California, Oregon. And Utah as well, including my nieces and sister-in-law. Wow have Cassie and Chloe grown in the last year and half since I've seen them. Kids grow so fast when they are still under 16.
The family catered in some food and then we opened some gifts for me, of course. There were some gag gifts too, including the "I'm not 40, I'm 18 with 22 years of experience" coffee mug, the replacement eyeballs, etc.; Funny cards too.
The absolute best thing about the gifts and indeed the party, though, was the game my niece and brother made for me. It was a simple game, but we had a ton of fun playing it. It was of the "spin the spinner and move" variety, with each space on the board requiring some sort of Marty and/or family related item to be able to move off of it. The best spaces were the "Tell a memory of Marty" or "Tell a family memory" spaces. As befits these things, I won the game. :) I've got the spinner and my brother-in-law is going to send me the board in a poster tube.
The second best thing was the dessert my brother-in-law Bill made me. He made the Flaming Coconut Pineapple Apple Pumpkin Upside-Down Pie Cake from the Tiki Thanksgiving web site! It was good, if extremely sweet. He even did the flambé which was very cool. That was the one recipe that we didn't try on our own at Thanksgiving. It was nice to see that all the recipes actually seemed to work from the Tiki Thanksgiving.
Next we started playing pinochle. We did a fair amount of that this trip and I always have fun doing so. Although with twelve people playing in the same game, it gets a bit silly. Pinochle has always been my family's game. I learned to play when I was four, so I've been playing for a while now. We had a new addition to the pinochle game this year as we taught my niece Cassie to play for the first time. Not all the nieces and nephews like to play, so it's nice to see it continuing on. Evidently Cassie is really into games now, so I'll have to start sending her games...
It was non-stop family fun from there on out. The next night was our big Christmas Eve bash at Mary's house. All the gifts (almost) get opened by my family that night and it took us hours this time around. Actually my parents did not even really have time to get their gifts opened before we had to leave for midnight mass (which is actually held at 10pm, go figure).
Christmas day we went to my sister Jo Ann's house and had another big meal and more pinochle there. Then on my actual birthday we ended up going bowling at a brand new, pretty cool bowling alley in downtown St. Louis and got a tour of my sister's office and chambers and court room where she is a judge. She works in the Old Post Office building in downtown St. Louis which is just an amazing building, really. Bowling at Flamingo Bowl was fun too. Oh, we actually tried to go to Crown Candy Kitchen in North St. Louis before all of this for lunch. I, amazingly, had never been there. It's amazing that such a place has survived in the north of the city, which has just been poverty blighted and run down since ever I can remember, but evidently the place still thrives. I'll come back to it later in the story. We ended up having lunch instead at Soda Fountain Square in the Laffayette Square area of St. Louis, which was a pretty nice place and certainly had plenty of room for our large party. It is so nice to see that the city is finally starting to come back some from the blight that hit it in the 20th century, with lots of white flight and poverty and completely empty rundown buildings everywhere.
On Friday, my mom and dad and John and I actually went back to Crown Candy and had lunch there. Boy, it is a tiny little place. Definitely worth the trip, though. It is a very cool place and I enjoyed the enormous shake and chili I had for lunch. We still had to wait 20 minutes for table at around 1:30 in the afternoon and then we ended up sitting side by side in two person booths instead of all at one table. It did not impede our ability to talk to each other, though, so it worked out fine. The final thing we did was go to the old Famous Barr store downtown that is now a Macy's and helped my dad pick out a new recliner since we all felt he was having trouble getting in and out of the old one since his knee trouble began.
Then to the airport and back to Houston before the weekend, although not by much considering our flight was very late and we did not get home until after two a.m. that night...
A wonderful trip, though, and a wonderful time with family.
I hope to add some pics soon...
I remember Christmastime fondly from my childhood so when the siblings asked me where we should get together for the party, I told them at home at Christmas would be wonderful instead of getting together elsewhere at a time distant from my actual birthday. So everyone got home by Sunday night and we started with a party over at my parents' retirement apartments. This was just the family, but that is still 25+ of us when we all get together, so it was not a truly small event.
My three sisters who live in St. Louis were there of course with their families. Then brothers were in town from California, Oregon. And Utah as well, including my nieces and sister-in-law. Wow have Cassie and Chloe grown in the last year and half since I've seen them. Kids grow so fast when they are still under 16.
The family catered in some food and then we opened some gifts for me, of course. There were some gag gifts too, including the "I'm not 40, I'm 18 with 22 years of experience" coffee mug, the replacement eyeballs, etc.; Funny cards too.
The absolute best thing about the gifts and indeed the party, though, was the game my niece and brother made for me. It was a simple game, but we had a ton of fun playing it. It was of the "spin the spinner and move" variety, with each space on the board requiring some sort of Marty and/or family related item to be able to move off of it. The best spaces were the "Tell a memory of Marty" or "Tell a family memory" spaces. As befits these things, I won the game. :) I've got the spinner and my brother-in-law is going to send me the board in a poster tube.
The second best thing was the dessert my brother-in-law Bill made me. He made the Flaming Coconut Pineapple Apple Pumpkin Upside-Down Pie Cake from the Tiki Thanksgiving web site! It was good, if extremely sweet. He even did the flambé which was very cool. That was the one recipe that we didn't try on our own at Thanksgiving. It was nice to see that all the recipes actually seemed to work from the Tiki Thanksgiving.
Next we started playing pinochle. We did a fair amount of that this trip and I always have fun doing so. Although with twelve people playing in the same game, it gets a bit silly. Pinochle has always been my family's game. I learned to play when I was four, so I've been playing for a while now. We had a new addition to the pinochle game this year as we taught my niece Cassie to play for the first time. Not all the nieces and nephews like to play, so it's nice to see it continuing on. Evidently Cassie is really into games now, so I'll have to start sending her games...
It was non-stop family fun from there on out. The next night was our big Christmas Eve bash at Mary's house. All the gifts (almost) get opened by my family that night and it took us hours this time around. Actually my parents did not even really have time to get their gifts opened before we had to leave for midnight mass (which is actually held at 10pm, go figure).
Christmas day we went to my sister Jo Ann's house and had another big meal and more pinochle there. Then on my actual birthday we ended up going bowling at a brand new, pretty cool bowling alley in downtown St. Louis and got a tour of my sister's office and chambers and court room where she is a judge. She works in the Old Post Office building in downtown St. Louis which is just an amazing building, really. Bowling at Flamingo Bowl was fun too. Oh, we actually tried to go to Crown Candy Kitchen in North St. Louis before all of this for lunch. I, amazingly, had never been there. It's amazing that such a place has survived in the north of the city, which has just been poverty blighted and run down since ever I can remember, but evidently the place still thrives. I'll come back to it later in the story. We ended up having lunch instead at Soda Fountain Square in the Laffayette Square area of St. Louis, which was a pretty nice place and certainly had plenty of room for our large party. It is so nice to see that the city is finally starting to come back some from the blight that hit it in the 20th century, with lots of white flight and poverty and completely empty rundown buildings everywhere.
On Friday, my mom and dad and John and I actually went back to Crown Candy and had lunch there. Boy, it is a tiny little place. Definitely worth the trip, though. It is a very cool place and I enjoyed the enormous shake and chili I had for lunch. We still had to wait 20 minutes for table at around 1:30 in the afternoon and then we ended up sitting side by side in two person booths instead of all at one table. It did not impede our ability to talk to each other, though, so it worked out fine. The final thing we did was go to the old Famous Barr store downtown that is now a Macy's and helped my dad pick out a new recliner since we all felt he was having trouble getting in and out of the old one since his knee trouble began.
Then to the airport and back to Houston before the weekend, although not by much considering our flight was very late and we did not get home until after two a.m. that night...
A wonderful trip, though, and a wonderful time with family.
I hope to add some pics soon...