When my family gets together for Thanksgiving, we also celebrate my grandma’s birthday. Her birthday is usually the week of Thanksgiving and the tradition in the past was to go out to celebrate the day after Thanksgiving for a fun celebratory meal. More recently, we changed the tradition to be the day before Thanksgiving so the day after could be leftover day.
This year, my grandma’s birthday was the day before I got to San Diego so I missed the celebration on her actual birthday. But plenty of my family was there and my mom cooked a steak dinner for everyone. My mom is such a good cook and I wish I had been there for dinner (but fortunately my mom saved me some leftovers for when I got there the next day).
I’m sad that I wasn’t able to be there, but it would have been a bit difficult for me to get there a day earlier. And I know that I can’t always be at everything that I want to be at. But I’m glad that my grandma seemed to have a great time and that she was able to celebrate turning 90 with lots of family with her.
But we did have our traditional day before Thanksgiving birthday celebration for my grandma. We went to an Italian restaurant that we’ve gone to a bunch of times in the past for her birthday. It works out well being there because there’s a private room that we can have (we had 14 of us in the group this time) and my cousin’s kids can run around a bit without worrying about other people in the restaurant. And it works out well for us to have our own room since we all move around so much and I’m sure we’d annoy other people in the restaurant.
The room is nice to have but the table always seems too big for the group. There is a lot of wasted space in the middle of the table so it can be tough to talk to everyone there. But since we moved around a lot during dinner everyone was able to talk to each other. And since this was my first chance to see some of my family on this trip, it was nice to get to have time to chat and catch up. And I knew that I would be spending a lot of time with everyone the next day so if I didn’t get to catch up with them as much as I would have liked, I wasn’t too worried about it.
The dinner is always good, but that’s not the highlight of the meal. It’s always seeing everyone having a good time and talking around the table. And while my grandma has difficulty hearing and couldn’t always participate in the conversation, she looked happy seeing everyone together. But we all did take time one at a time to go over to my grandma and talk to her. It’s easier for her to have a conversation with one person and she seemed to like having time with each person who was there.
I’m sure we were a pretty loud and crazy group, but that’s why the private room works out perfectly for us. And then when the waiter brought out a dessert for my grandma with a candle in it, we could sing as loudly as we wanted to!
It was so great to see my grandma so happy and enjoying herself. I know how important any time I get to spend with her is and I try to take advantage of it the best that I can.
Turning 90 is a big accomplishment and I’m glad we were able to celebrate my grandma’s birthday twice. And while I was only able to be there for one of the celebrations, I’m glad that I could be there at all. I know that I’m lucky to be able to travel for this and my work is flexible enough that I don’t have to worry about taking time off.
I’ll do the rest of my Thanksgiving trip recap next week. I hope that you all had a great time doing whatever you decided to do for Thanksgiving and you got to eat some delicious food!
You Might Also Like
A Day In San Diego (or Celebrating An Anniversary And A Birthday)
Full Thanksgiving Trip (or Being With My Family In San Diego)
Grandma’s Birthday Dinner (or One Of Our Thanksgiving Traditions)
Continuing The Birthday Celebrations (or A Birthday Twin Adventure)
Maybe I Should Be A Wine Drinker (or How We Spent My Grandma’s Birthday Dinner)
Happy Birthday to Me! (or Part 1)
