Grandpa's birthday bash

Grandpa Glen celebrated his birthday a day late on Monday, a combination family dinner, FHE, and birthday party. I served one of his favorites; spaghetti with meat sauce, salad, and garlic bread. The birthday dessert was a new one, apple pudding cake with caramel sauce. It is prepared much like the chocolate pudding cake that I make. Served with vanilla ice cream, everyone seemed to like it.

My sister Janis brought me the birthday candle display many years ago from Germany. The heart base has a candle holder and two holes for numbers. That means that you can use it until you are 99 OR have a "1" in your current age. They were all out of "1's" when she purchased my gift. That is why this holder stayed in the drawer during my children's teen years.

Grandpa started a new tradition this birthday. All his grandchildren joined him in a "birthday clap." They clapped 59 times before blowing out the candle!

Ruby and Heather clapped.

Toby clapped. It was a clapping good time. Great idea grandpa!

Then everyone blew as hard as they could from where they sat. I think that TJ probably had the most success.
They then grouped together to watch grandpa open his presents. He also received the best hand decorated birthday cards from his favorite little people.

After presents and dessert they were out the door to play in the leaf pile, another "grandpa birthday tradition."

Before dinner, they had taken turns raking them all into a pile.

Julianna decided to skip the leaf throwing madness and walked around with a jingle bell instead.

Wise move on her part, because it got pretty crazy.

They soon moved from throwing leaves to burying one another in leaves.


For those of you unfamiliar with seasons in Arizona, the leaves turn color in December, have fallen by Glen's birthday in early January, and will bud out again a month later. It's all a bit compressed so that we can have six months of summer!

Toby talked his dad into coming back the next day, just so he could play in the leaves.


Many thanks to Emilia for getting out her camera and taking these great pictures of my grandchildren's tongues!

Sadie loved being buried in leaves. Much more fun than watching the Fiesta Bowl inside!

Please excuse all the Christmas decor. We had just returned from our trip to California and nephew Kyle Bunker's marriage to Janae Schmidt in the San Diego Temple on Saturday. My camera was not working that day so I'm hoping that someone will soon share their photos. It was a beautiful day in La Jolla! Our goal is to banish Christmas by sunset this Saturday. Does anyone want to help?