What a great day my husband's side of the family had yesterday as we celebrated my father-in-law's 77th birthday a few days early!
Typically we don't all get together except for Thanksgiving Eve, Thanksgiving Day, and the day after Thanksgiving - then usually for a quick few hours sometime during Christmas and New Years for those who can make it. There are too many places to be and too many different schedules to get together with that many people too often, so this weekend was definitely a blessing.
This is my husband with both of his parents and siblings. It's neat that all six siblings now (since June 2010) live in Oklahoma and Texas.
This is just the siblings with their dad. Charlie has recently begun radiation treatments and will be having chemo again due to prostate cancer that he's been fighting for many years. God has continued to bless him in that, even with treatments and appointments, he's continued to work for all of these years. He's not working as many hours/days as he did, but he's still able to do it some. He always enjoyed his garden, so that's why his birthday cake has the cute garden on it!
There are 17 grand kids - plus four of them are married....and one great-grandchild. Thirteen of the 17 grands were able to attend yesterday's event! A few others visited with him earlier in the week.
Charlie with the first and only great-grandson, Levi. So cute and sweet!
In this picture my husband is breaking a hollow chocolate bunny. It's a yearly tradition for him to give one to his dad. Something about him always thinking they were solid, so his dad pressed on one in a store to prove it really was solid - and it WASN'T. So this is a joke between them. Kind of funny!
Charlie is proud of his broken bunny!
Of course, with 30 people gathered for a birthday celebration, there would have to be a lot of food around....and there was! Italian food was the menu for the day. Here are some of the recipes that were served, from my family recipe blog:
Stick to Your Ribs Meatballs (I didn't follow this like I should have and I kept them warm in a crock pot over night, so they weren't as good as this recipe really is!)
Salad with Olive Garden Dressing (can't beat that dressing - it's great!)
And birthday cake! So cute and made by June at June's Tasty Treats in Altus, OK. Yummy!
Happy Birthday, Charlie!
It was a great get-together to honor such a sweet father! Thank you for organizing it and baking all the food!!!!
ReplyDelete