Sunday, March 20, 2011
On March 6, 2011, my Grandma Johnson turned 80 years old. This wasn't one of those birthdays that quietly came and went. Oh, no. This was a MAJOR OCCASION befitting a party! And not just any party. Hmmmmm, how to describe this? It's said that Dr. Craig Jessop often says, "Anything that's worth producing is worth overproducing."
Suffice it to say, Dr. Jessop would get along very well with my Aunts Teri and Sheri, who were in charge of the slumber party portion of the festivities. Which means, this was a party of amazingly fun proportions--a slumber party on steroids, if you will. And we had the time of our lives! Just the food alone could have sustained a small country for two years. And if you think I'm kidding, well, you've never been "twinned." (That's our little catch phrase for when Aunts Sheri and Teri put their collaborative efforts to something--because the results are pretty astounding.)
Anyway, on with the memories!
This was a slumber party for all of the women in the family--no kids, no husbands, just a big pool of sisters, cousins, aunts, moms, and of course the guest of honor (who was very surprised, by the way): Grandma. When we arrived, we each got a little (little?) party favor bag like this:
And inside were stuffed all kinds of treats and every good thing. WARNING: I'm probably going to talk about the food a lot, because the food was a major player in the night's events. Which is why I started exercising aggressively the following week. I think I may have gained 7 pounds at this slumber party alone!
Anyway, cousins started arriving from far and wide, as shown here with Annette and her balloons:
And here's cute Brianna cutting her homemade French bread. (HOMEMADE, people!)
In case you didn't catch that, I said "Homemade French bread."
Seven words: YUM. YUM. YUM. YUM. YUM. YUM. YUM. Okay, technically that's one word copied and pasted seven times. But I wanted to give Brianna her props for that yummy bread which, incidentally, perfectly complemented the great multitude of pizzas we ordered from Fredrico's. We all chipped in for pizza by throwing cash into a basket labeled, "Pizza Dough." Isn't that clever? That's a good example of how a pizza drive is "twinned." The ordinary becomes extraordinary, leaving you practically begging to throw money in that cute basket labeled "Pizza Dough." Love it!
Here's a cute picture of the birthday girl with her three beautiful daughters (my cute mommy is the one on the left). Isn't that a sweet picture? I think it should be in the Ensign under some sort of article about strong mothers and daughters and sisters. Although my mother might object to being in the Ensign in her jammies.
And speaking of jammies, we all changed into them the very minute we got to the house, and promptly began eating and talking and laughing and eating and squealing and laughing and talking and eating and talking. And if you're wondering if we went to bed on time, I'll have you know that we were all very judicious. After all, we're wives and mothers and sisters and daughters who have great demands on our time and we all needed to be at our peak performance the next day so we could take care of our families in the manner that's befitting a wife and mother in Zion.
In other words, we stayed up until 3:30 a.m. and then woke up the next day feeling like total crap with headaches and indigestion. But oh, we'd do it again. Some things are just worth it and responsibility has to take a flying leap. Begone, responsibilities! I'm 18 years old again.
Here's another one of my cute grandma, mom and aunts:
And some of my cuzzy-wuzzies:
You may have noticed that yours truly is not in any of these pictures. That's because 1) I was the one taking the pictures, and 2) I'm not comfortable posting pictures of myself in my pajamas on this blog for all the world to see. I am not, however, averse to posting pictures of my relations in their pajamas on this blog for all the world to see! That's the great thing about families: they're stuck with you for eternity whether they're happy about that fact or not. ;)
Anyway, the next day we woke up and had a sumptuous breakfast. (I think I'll omit the part where I knocked over an entire mug of hot cocoa onto Grandma's new carpet. I don't want anyone to know I'm a klutz.) And after breakfast, we headed home for a quick shower--really trying to wake ourselves up, since we don't drink coffee and therefore couldn't rely on a cup of Joe to sober us up from our no-sleep-eating-binge. So after we got all showered and presentable (and marginally awakened--honestly, how do people with hangovers do it? Oh yeah, they drink coffee and not hot cocoa which I may or may not have spilled all over the carpet.) we headed to Maddox for Grandma's "real" party with the whole family (i.e., the men and children were now allowed to join in the fun).
Check out all of these people!! What a posterity for a great, great lady:
Then we took pictures of each individual family with Grandma. First, the Mortensen contingency:
Then the Higham contingency (with my mysteriously and suddenly decapitated brother, Ben, on the right)
Isn't that crazy? James says that picture looks like it's from Back to the Future, where the different family members start disappearing. "One point twenty-one gigawatts!"
Then the Kelly Johnson family:
And the Jeff Johnson family:
And last but not least, the Davis clan:
The Davises were really short on numbers, since most of them live scattered all over the country and couldn't be there. But they were there in spirit. Anyway, the whole event was really, really nice and a great time was had by all, as evidenced by James' happy expression:
Happy, happy birthday Grandma dear! (May we have a party EVERY year!!)
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