An Interesting Day Celebrating My Mom's Birthday

This past weekend, we all got together (in one house!) for my mom’s birthday and it was both lovely and horrible all at the same time.

Though the day didn’t turn out quite as planed (more on that in a bit), anytime we can get together like this, it’s always a win in my book. Because no matter how the day goes, I love when we can all make the time to be in one place (though as always, we missed my sister Amy who lives in Georgia with her husband and 6 kids!), especially these days. We’re all so busy with our own lives that it feels like we barely have enough time to talk on the phone, let alone spend a few hours together.

We had brunch and drank mimosas while the kids played with the dogs and rolled down my brother’s hill. It was a gorgeous, but freezing, Sunday afternoon. I made fried eggs using the farm fresh eggs from our farm and they were nothing short of delicious. I am contemplating why I ever use any other kind? If we make our stay at the farm more permanent, we would have fresh eggs every morning. Can you imagine?

My mom has never liked celebrating her birthday, something PJ noticed and mentioned on the way home. I guess I had never really thought about it before, but after he brought it up, it got me thinking: I don’t remember her ever being particularly joyful on her birthday, not in a celebratory, beyond excited kind of way. Maybe she doesn’t like all the attention on her? Maybe she doesn’t like getting older?

Whatever the reason might be, that day, she confidently looked in the camera when I asked how old she was turning and answered, with a smile, “I am turning 66 years old!”

After brunch, we all loaded up and headed to the Chattanooga Mercantile, which has suddenly become our favorite antiques store. We found a couple of old oil portraits that we wanted to bring home with us, and might just do so when we’re ready to starting decorating Holiday House (months and months and moths from now).

All together it was a wonderful afternoon spent with the ones we love.

However, what started as a beautiful day quickly turned dark after we left. The dogs, Coco and Winston, got into a fight in the living room and they thought Coco was going to rip Winston’s throat out (it got that bad). Coco’s leg has been bothering her and everyone’s theory is that Winston unintentionally got too close to her, and it scared Coco, so she lunged at him and put her mouth around his neck. Everyone started to scream and cry and yell for the dogs to stop, but all to no avail. For reference, Winston doesn’t even weigh 10 pounds (he’s a little weenie dog!) and Coco is much bigger than that, so everyone pretty much feared the worse.

It turned out, though, that the only one to get hurt was my brother, Taylor. He did what you should never do (something we all learned that day!) and tried to break up the dog fight by pulling their mouths away from each other with his hands. Winston ended up biting his hand and he had to go to the E.R. He’s doing fine now, but he’s saying the pain is really bad.

Meanwhile, my mom started feeling sick that night and is now home with a cold. What a day. Anna and I made her some homemade chicken noodle soup yesterday and brought it over to her house while keeping our distance. No one has been sick in our household in a while (knock on wood) and we’re trying to keep it that way.