Semi-surprise 80th birthday party

Mark’s brother Gregg is six years older and started having kids while he was in his 20s, while Mark didn’t have his one kid until he was 40. So Mark’s brother’s grandkids, of which there are six, are almost as old as Mark’s son. Gregg and his wife Jean’s birthdays are close together in May, and they both turned 80 this spring. The kids and grandkids planned a semi-surprise 80th birthday for Gregg & Jean in Lancaster PA (they mostly live in the Baltimore area, so Lancaster’s not too hard to get to). The surprise was that the birthday boy & girl were only expecting the immediate family, which would have been about thirteen people – the three kids plus two spouses, and 6 grandkids, and Gregg and Jean – but the party planners also invited additional people, like me and Mark plus lots of other old family friends and golf buddies. So instead of about 13 people there were about 30.

It was actually pretty fun. Once we got over having to travel on Mother’s Day/graduation weekend, with limited flights available and expensive hotels, we found that Lancaster is a nice town. We didn’t stay at the Holiday Inn where everyone else was. We found a place in the Lancaster Arts District, an old warehouse converted to a hotel, see exposed brick below, that was a 15-minute walk from the Holiday Inn.

The party itself was brunch at the hotel, and again quite nice with a band and bar and a buffet of brunch foods and more lunch-y foods. And nicely spoken words and even a little dancing. Over by 2:00 so we walked through the Central Market that was just about to close. We only bought Wilburs, Pennsylvania chocolates that Mark’s niece Amy recommended as kinda like Hershey’s kisses but better. If I lived there I expect I’d go and do a lot of my food shopping at the Market. Then we walked around on the Franklin and Marshall campus, seeing people taking graduation pictures and I think the high school prom getting started at a campus building. We met up with a subset of the crowd at Lancaster Southern Market for dinner, basically a food hall with lots of choices. And then an even smaller subset walked to get ice cream after dinner.

Travel all went smoothly aside from having to get up crazy early on both Friday and Sunday. The drive from Lancaster back to the Philadelphia airport was sure easier at 6:30 Sunday morning than it had been at 4:30 on Frday afternoon. Both ways we both enjoyed the landscape and town and street names that reminded us of where we grew up, me in southwestern PA and Mark in the D.C. area, northern Virginia.

When we got back to Chicago, we went through the “keep walking” tunnel.

Spring was a little more advanced in Lancaster PA, less bloomy trees. I was glad that things were still in bloom here when we got back, although the petals are falling. This morning when I went out with the Jasper and the bike trailer there were places where it was like snow. Today it was a high of 80° with 96% humidity at times, foggy this morning, and tomorrow it’s supposed to get to almost 90°. So I’m sure we’re seeing the last of the blooms.

Last Wednesday was a regular Jasper day, since we didn’t leave for Pennsylvania until omigod in the morning Friday. We drove because the reserved parking at remote lot F at O’Hare cost a little bit less then the bus, and but also because driving we didn’t have to leave until 6:30 while we’d have had to be on the bus at 5:00 to make our flight.

A few cooking projects before we left and after we got back.

And I thought this NYT Connections from May 4 (may the fourth … be with you) was particularly egregious. Planets with first letters changed?? When Solo, Boba, and Darth were all in the puzzle?!! I got qualities of overcooked meat and then spent a lot of time looking for one word movie titles – Bluto, Cars, Solo …I should’ve known bubble tea. But I’d dropped off playing for awhile and have picked up and doing better. Since the SNL cold open where James Austin Johnson’s Trump signs an executive order to make NYT Connections easier I’ve felt like I have to get them, and they could even be harder.