I was happy to do some hosting but wasn't sure what we should do to celebrate. Luckily everyone came up with some great ideas. We decided to start with a barbecue on Friday night at my house, all the kids invited. We wanted to spend the day together on Saturday as well but we weren't sure what to do. A hike? A day trip someplace? Happily my brother proposed a great idea - he thought it would be really fun to create sort of a scavenger hunt for dad that would take him on a tour around the city of places where he grew up and spent a lot of time. Isn't that a great idea? We quickly came up with quite a list of places - his grandmother's home, a couple of his own childhood homes, his high school, places he worked, his university. At first we thought that the grandkids could join in as well - they came with us to the first couple of stops in Sheri's car but we quickly realized that this would be extremely boring for them so we sent them off to go do something fun. We were sad that Peter couldn't join us - he had cello teacher training all day. I was bummed he couldn't be there. But Dad, Margaret, Adam, Whitley and I all had fun driving around, videoing dad as he told stories about each of the places we stopped, seeing him absolutely light up as he figured out the clues and arrived at the places.
In the evening we ordered out Indian food and enjoyed a feast on the front porch of my niece Kate's house. She and Mary Grace really worked hard to set up a lovely dinner for us and I appreciated their efforts. We had originally planned on going to a restaurant but I'm so glad we didn't. We needed to have all the time and quiet we wanted to enjoy our dinner and have a long talk with dad about his future and health and needs. Those talks are not easy. It was helped by the good company plus a walk over to the chocolate shop around the corner after dinner.
Happy Birthday to my dad. His past few years have been challenging to say the least. I love him, I worry about him, I wish I could make things easier for him. I was so happy to gather as a family to celebrate him. He really thrives when he's surrounded by people he loves.
Here we are loading up in Adam's rental car to drive many miles together to see the sites of my dad's history. First stop was of course getting large beverages to keep us going.
We stopped at his grandmother's house in Holladay. It was the first stop and I hadn't thought about how weird I'd feel about standing in front of strangers' houses and gawking and talking and videoing. Luckily no one came out to ask us what the heck we were up to.
We stopped at the house where dad lived when he graduated from high school. I actually had no idea how close this house was to my own home when I was in jr. high and high school.
We also made sure to stop at the homes where we lived as a family after we moved to Utah from Colorado. We even bumped into an old neighbor and he and dad had a nice talk.
Of course East High had to be on the tour:
And THE house on 5th South where dad spent his early years. There's a family joke about that house - we have driven by it so many thousands of times and every time dad would say something like, "Did I ever tell you kids that that's the house I grew up in?" We began saying it every time we passed it just as a joke. Well guess what, poor Peter only knew about the joke and not where the actual house was. I still need to point it out to him!
I'm very happy with the way we celebrated dad. I kind of wish we had found a way to get him together with all of his old friends but I just didn't have the bandwidth for that. Some other time.
On dad's actual birthday a couple of weeks later he and I went out to lunch. I loved taking him to Siegfried's German Deli down town. Man that place is so good. Make sure to get the red cabbage. It seems like something called red cabbage could never be delicious but is so is. I love their tangy warm cabbage. Again, doesn't sound good. Trust me, it is. Happy Birthday, dad.
1 comment:
That's awesome! I am sure he had a great time!
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