Adventures With Grishny And Family: Day Three

Today was my birthday. I was a quarter of a century old last year, and that sounded all foofy and important. This year, I'm just twenty-six. Big whoop. At sixteen, you're old enough for your driver's license (in most states.) At eighteen, you're old enough to vote. At twenty-one, you're "legal." At twenty-five, you're finally old enough to rent a car. But twenty-six? Nothing happens when you turn twenty-six. Unless you have my mother-in-law, in which case you get to wear a crown that's too small for your head. Hurray! I stuck it on Jonathan's head and took some cute pictures. It fits him just fine.

This morning we went to services at the church where my wife and I were married. As I anticipated, we were welcomed enthusiastically and got to talk and fellowship with a lot of old friends whom we hadn't seen since the last time we were in New England. Afterwards they held a fellowship dinner, and we were invited to stay for it.

After dropping my wife off at her mother's, I went out again on errands, to get my pictures back from Walmart and to get some groceries from DeMoula's (a.k.a. Market Basket) for tomorrow. My m-i-l has been pining for Moose Tracks ice cream since she had it in Ohio when she visited us in April. She said she can't find it anywhere in NH...but I did! So she's all happy about that now.

The pictures turned out really nice. Again I wished I had taken more during our lunch at Newicks, but then again, I wouldn't have wanted Sam and Leen to feel like they were part of a photo shoot or anything.

Tonight my m-i-l was going to order an eggplant pizza for dinner, which is something that I've only had here and really like. She kind of forgot the minute detail that it's Christmas Eve and that nothing, not even the pizza parlors, are open. She made ravioli instead. We had a weird "forest" cake with cherry topping and candles, and I wore the aforementioned crown for as brief a time as possible. Afterwards, I played a round of Scrabble on the computer with my m-i-l's friend Don, who had joined us for dinner. He and I teamed up against the computer set on advanced level. We did pretty well until the computer creamed us in one horrible blow with an 81-point word! We ended up losing by about 40 points, and getting stuck with the Q to boot. Bah.

We may or may not watch the George C. Scott version of "A Christmas Carol" tonight before going to bed. We've got to have something to do while we eat our Moose Tracks ice cream. Yum!

Gri"pping the arms of my chair, I forcibly blew out the candles on my cake and then settled back to watch the falling cinders and a"sh(ny)