In honor of March birthdays

Super sweet 26 hours.  Yesterday my day was jam-packed.  I put in 3.5 hours of overtime.  Then I drove to Manchester to attend the opening of the Turkish Cultural Center.  Nedim was in his element making sure people were mixing and mingling, eating and having a good time.  I met the Consul General of the Boston Consulate.  I ate a quick lunch and left before our NH Governor arrived.  But I did my wifely duty and that was important.

Then I drove up I-93 and went to the Ashram.  Heather, Stan, Joshua, and Miss X had already arrived. Selim and Robert had not gotten back from a day of skiing at Gunstock.  Heather couldn't make it up last weekend for Mom's birthday so she planned a party for Sunday.  The party was for Mom and all the other March and early April birthdays.  Happy Birthday to Fletcher, Mom, Miriam, Russell, Nick, Todd, and Matthew.

Have I said before what a fabulous,

super organized,

awesome,

beautiful,

all around amazing sister I have?

She is the best.  And from 5 hours away, she planned the party.  I showed up with my bag of ingredients and baking pans, not yet having managed to actually bake the cupcakes and blondies that I had promised.  

Last night as we were sitting down to dinner, we looked at each other and realized that the three of us ladies were wearing pink shirts.  And we matched the amaryllis flower on the side table.  This flower is amazing.  I've never seen a one bulb produce so many gigantic flowers.  Gorgeous.  I would love a shirt in that exact shade.

Then today, while we were busy in the kitchen I looked around and we were in different shirts, but still the same pink theme.  Clearly, we are related.

After lunch, we rearranged the dining room table and chairs into a new configuration and it worked out really well.  We had 20 people in total -- 3 kids, 17 big people.  The boys played together out on the converted porch room for at least an hour with very little supervision and no screaming.  Robert had given them a bag of pipe cleaners and those turned out to be a hit.

I was impressed.  The party lasted close to three hours.  What can be better than drinking chai and eating tasty food with friends and family?

I've known most of the adults in the room since 1975 or '77.  These are relationships of long standing. At first several were my teachers, then colleagues, now friends, and still Ashramites.  It really is comforting to have these friendships of long standing. 

It was hard to leave tonight.  I wanted to spend the night and leave early in the morning.  But Selim said no we had to leave after bath because he, "didn't want to miss a minute of school."  Valid.  There was a chance that we would have encountered traffic on the road and we might not have made it to his school in time for the 8:05 bell.  Still, it was tough pulling out of the driveway in the dark, leaving the warmth of the family behind.