Birthday weekend

A week of school - I believe - after Vincent's de facto week away and the Ike aftermath - and the weekend after Stephanie's birthday - we helped celebrate two other birthdays on the same Saturday. Vincent helped his former prom date, Jessi (with whom we had commiserated - along with her family - in the "Reintegration" dinner), celebrate her birthday (Jessi and Vincent hug, above) with a party in lovely Tyler Park, near the Highlands (near where Vincent would soon spend even more time). I stopped by with a visit and wished Jessi happy birthday and chatted briefly with her parents, Lewis and Debbie.



For the second time in three years, we also helped friend Sarah (pictured below) - who's shown up in previous blog entries (including "Pie night" and "World fest") - celebrate her birthday. This time was with a group of friends at a lovely Italian restaurant not too far from her home - not too far from where Vincent's been to a skating birthday party, where we watch games with the Seminole Club, and where we shop for Korean food. Sarah is associate pastor of a sprawling nearby Presbyterian church whom we met when we've visited there for services. She has a fun group of friends whom Stephanie knows a few more of now, now that she's joined Sarah's book club.

Sarah's friend, Kim (below), also an organizer for the bookclub, helped serve as a decoy at a famous worship service at Sarah's church.

Sarah put together a fun trivia game about guests at the party, which forced us - between dinner and cake - to talk with everyone - we had to match each person with a fun fact about them on a card. Wendy (below) and Rich (further below) were people we had never met before, but got to talk with during the game.

The man below and then below below that (Jonathan and Sara) are fun friends of Sarah we met when the five of us plus Vincent went rollar skating. Vincent resisted skating and it turned out it was partly because he had an in-grown toe nail, which we promptly got treated (ow!) early that coming week. After skating (same place Vincent went to the birthday party) we went to Starbucks and closed them out - as - among other things - Vincent and Jonathan talked about video games.

Sarah had a beautiful birthday cake - which Sara had actually baked.

Sara lit the candles.

Sarah - who I believe is several years younger than Stephanie - had no trouble blowing out the candles. Boy (below), did Sarah love that piece of cake!

We stayed around talking for a while, and Sarah and Stephanie posed here with Julia, a friend with whom we went to a concert at a church with a Christian rock band, Newsong, whose leader Stephanie had heard speak way back at Aucilla Christian Academy (FL) when she taught there. (He was promoting an earlier tour and criticizing the theory of evolution.)

As we left, Sarah suffered an occupational hazard - she ran into a parishioner (on a date!?), but she handled that - as with most things - gracefully. I went on to pick up Vincent at Jessi's house. We had all three apparently enjoyed the respective birthday celebrations in which we had participated. Click on the play button below to watch and listen as we finished singing Sarah "Happy birthday."

-- Perry