CELEBRATIONS GALORE!!

Life is worth celebrating!

I believe we don’t celebrate enough. 

Yes, we celebrate, but sometimes celebrations are nothing more than lets have a drink-or another drink.

When my children were little, a dear friend gave us the Red Plate. Perhaps you have seen it, all across the plate it says “You are Special Today”. 

We always brought it out for birthdays (of course), but what if you won the spelling bee, or the Mad Minute Math contest, or scored your first goal in soccer, or hit your first homerun, or made your first basket. Those things were worth celebrating! And what if you made choir, or were in a play? 

You were celebrated at our house with the Special Plate.

I often would give guests who came to our home for dinner the first time, the Special Plate, because we thought they were special to us.

And engagements and births and baptisms-all these are worth celebrating.

This past weekend-or actually on Saturday through Tuesday, I was fortunate enough to celebrate three different occasions, and boy, was it FUN.

The first celebration was a bridal shower for my son Todd’s fiancee, Katy.

How fun it was to shower her with gifts they would use in their home. To see her mom and sister and grandmother make a three hour drive to celebrate her, and have so many friends come was wonderful.

 “The Sisters” gave her the shower; that is her future sisters, my two daughters and other future daughter in law. They did a fantastic job with food and decorations. The scenery at the winery was glorious on this warm, but windy day.

The next celebration was very very special. My dearest best friend in the world, Mary Kay was turning 60. She doesn’t like to be the center of attention much and prefers small intimate gatherings. So after getting the OK from her husband Scott, I asked a few of her closest friends to dinner.

Originally there were to be six of us, but one of our friends had to back out to attend a rosary for a friend who had passed away.

We went to a Greek restraunt in downtown San Jose called Nemea. Only one of us had been before but I solely trusted her judgement call. We were led into a special private room which had been decorated by MK’s friend Karen with beautiful two colored gerber daisies and cute napkins and treat boxes from See’s candy. We tried all different types of food and had a wine from Greece that was so tasty. I loved having fried cheese that was prepared at the table spread on yummy bread. We each tried different foods and it was so fun to trade bites. And the dessert sampler was amazing. Unfortunately we forgot to take a group picture but I did manage to get one with one side of the table featuring our “birthday Girl”.

CHEERS TO YOU MARY KATHERINE PAINE!! WE LOVE YOU.

On Tuesday I received my last Christmas present. I had been given tickets to The Giants Home Opener by Scud and believe me, this is a day worth celebrating.

For years when Scud was the Area Director in San Jose, Opening Day was declared a Young Life Holiday. We reserved about 30-40 tickets for the game and leaders , committee and their families were invited. We know we had at least ten opening days. We tailgated and had an absolute blast rooting on our beloved Giants.

My most memorable Opening Day was 1980. Willie McCovey had announced before the season that this would be his last year playing and I did not want to miss it. I had been on bed rest for about 3 weeks for pre-term labor was at 37 weeks and the doctor gave me the go ahead. It was about in the 5th inning that I started contractions. Altho, our son Todd was not born until the next day, I will always remember the day I almost had a baby on Opening Day!

I love Opening Day because I LOVE BASEBALL and particularly my San Francisco Giants, It was the warmest Opening day in The Giants history in San Francisco, at 77 degrees. It was sunny and felt very hot, until the sun was shaded (relief) in about the 3rd inning. 

The GIANTS beat the Diamondbacks and all is right with the World.

So GO AHEAD AND CELEBRATE!! Life is worth the opportunities we are given to remember our sweetest moments.