Celebrations

This past weekend we celebrated Easter combined with Birthdays.  Our son, Mike, has managed to cluster his family's birthdays such that they can all be celebrated at once.  In one week in March we have Mike's birthday, followed by Alex and Hannah's, a couple days apart.  Following closely is his wife, Avril's, birthday and then Kenny's.

Since we're not going to be there to celebrate each birthday individually, we had a birthday celebration as part of our Easter dinner.

Of course, opening the presents came first

For the birthday cake and blowing out of the candles, I had a stroke of genius that was a lot of fun.  First I got a cupcake cake, which makes for easy serving.  Then, in order for each birthday person to have a chance to blow out his/her own candles, I grouped the candles in sections and just set fire to one section at a time.

First Alex blew out his five candles.

Then Kenny blew out his corner of seven candles.

 Followed by Hannah blowing out her three candle corner.

For the adults, I just put three candles, representing past, present and future.  Avril blew her three out first.

And finally Mike blew his three out.

With each individual blowing out of the candles, we sang Happy Birthday to the featured birthday person...a lot of singing!

Then I stood the remaining three candles from the packet up in a pool of wax on the table and Emily did her TaeKwonDo trick skill of 'punching' the candles out using the wind generated from the amazing speed of her flying fist of death!  Nice trick Em.

While we were in Lethbridge, Allan, Emily and I went to walk around the still mostly frozen Park Lake.

and Lloyd, Emily, Allan and I took a drive down to Cardston to put flowers on Lloyd's parents grave. It was nice to see that the decorations Kenzie and Charlie placed on the grave last summer were still there.  It's a lovely spot to visit.

It's snowing here in Edmonton today and isn't suppose to stop until there's 15cm of it.  Frustrating since the snow pack from the last storm was almost completely melted.  With that in mind, Mickey and I are heading down to Arizona on Tuesday for a ten-day break.  Yea!