BIRTHDAYS!

Jim is 66 years old today. He was born on Lorna Hansen's 14th birthday. Lorna's family had a surprise birthday party for her yesterday in honor of her 80th birthday. In spite of weather forecasts for dire circumstances, everything went very well. Here are Lorna and Jim at Lorna's house yesterday. Jim thought the shirt he's wearing would be appropriate for Memorial Day. It says "I BLEED Red White and Blue." He got it one of the times he donated blood.

We took Jim out to eat at Olive Garden tonight. Betsey had the chicken scampi and really liked it. Jim and I had salmon and Kirsten had spaghetti. Kirsten and I gave Jim a DVD of the Court Jester, with Danny Kaye. I got that idea awhile back when my friend Jill mentioned on her blog how much her family enjoyed it.

Betsey bought him a new rain gauge. All the numbers were worn off the old one. I knew he was needing a change when the other day he threatened to take a ruler with him in order to see how much rain had really fallen. She also got him a $5 DVD set which she said was from Walmart’s reject pile. It has 20 old John Wayne movies that are black and white and about 1 hour long. We watched one tonight. It’s interesting to notice how films have evolved over time. Betsey finally figured out that something huge that was missing was music. There was no background music of any kind, and the acting left something to be desired. We just had to laugh at some of it.

We sang "Happy Birthday," to him, rather creatively, and all of the kids called too. We also bought a New York style cheesecake, and heated up some frozen berries to put on top. It was the ending of a very nice day.