DINNER WITH THE GROWN-UPS

My sister Kara is the greatest when it comes to birthdays and parties. She always made a birthday special by decorating and making banners and cute signs for the person having a birthday. Nowadays, you can expect to get a really cute hand-made card from her on your birthday, and she never forgets! Now that we are older and all live in our own homes (well most of us), we've found that our lives are getting busier and busier and sadly, we just don't have time to do big birthday get-togethers like we used to. So leave it to Kara to come up with a really great idea for celebrating birthdays: she suggested going out to dinner twice a year- just us grown-up siblings and our spouses. Last night was our first bi-annual birthday dinner at TGI Friday's. Everyone was able to make it except Joe who couldn't get time off from work. We had a great time sitting around and talking, making jokes, and teasing each other. Of course we had to talk about all the good and even some of the bad stories about growing up in a large family with both biological and adopted siblings, and although we're not all related by blood, I think we all inherited the sarcastic gene somehow. Kara had taken the very unpleasant task of letting my mom know that this dinner was going to be for the kids only, but she took it pretty well.

It was a great time that I'm looking forward to again in another six months or so! But the fun had to end sooner rather than later because people needed to get back to work or to their own kids. Jeff commented on the way home that he had never been to something where it was just my siblings and that it was a nice time. For me, it was reminiscent of childhood Sundays when we weren't allowed to do much in the afternoons, so we'd sit around playing games or talking.

I've always been a big believer in living for the moment, that I should do what I want to do now, rather than waiting... cuz you just never know. Spending time with my Sibs is important and I'm glad we had our fun dinner last night. Thanks Kara!