Birthday Barbeque

We had a really nice birthday barbeque celebration in the backyard this past weekend.  Although it was a bit smoky from the Canadian wildfires, the weather was actually quite nice for a change!

The company was good.  The food was good.  The drinks were cold.  There were plenty of games to play.  The rain stopped just long enough for us to set up the yard on Friday, have a great time together on Saturday and then clean up before it started raining again.  

Looking at these photos, it seems to me that everyone had a good time!

As always, the kids congregated on the sailboat most of the day.  At one point, four of the grandchildren were on the sailboat at the same time (photo above).  I have no idea how they all fit in that rather small cockpit!  In hindsight, when I saw that the four of them were on the sailboat together, I should have had Liza place 10 day old Sophia into Lukey or Kenzie's arms too so I could get a photo of all the grandchildren on the sailboat at the same time.  

Below, Gee is mixing up two batches of giant bubble solution with some of the grandchildren.  Ace and Ellie were excited to make some bubbles.  I think Kenzie was probably looking forward to making some giant bubbles again too...

Giant Jenga was played all day long!  I'm glad I spent the time and effort in making this game.  It is definitely a popular game.  In the photo below, Ellie and daddy are playing...

Lukey and Ace played some golf at the back end of the yard on and off throughout the day...

The putting green is slowly being overrun by weeds and it is proving to be a very high maintenance feature in the backyard needing more water than we can provide so I'm thinking of changing this putting green and fairway area to horseshoe pits instead.  I'll wait to make the change to horseshoes until the green is unusable due to weeds and dying grass so it probably won't be a change we make this summer.  

I think I'll replace this putting green with horseshoes either next spring or the following fall or spring.  Horseshoe pits require far less maintenance and no water so this would be a pretty good area for horseshoes.  And realistically, I always knew that the putting green would be a short-lived feature in the yard.  I knew that eventually, the green would be overrun by weeds making it impossible to putt accurately.  It was just a question of whether I would want to spend the time and energy to continue maintaining the green and for how long.  Already at this point, replacing the green with horseshoe pits seems like a more reasonable idea.  

Gee with 10 day old Sophia...

Sophia made the rounds being held by different people throughout the day.  Judy was eager to meet Sophia and will be a new grandmother herself next month so she spent a little time getting to know Sophia too...

Bright sunshine was reflecting off the shiny clean white sailboat hull brightly illuminating Ace.  The sunshine reflecting off this hull can be blinding if you aren't wearing sunglasses!  

Sophia was wide awake for a bit which gave me an opportunity to finally get a photo of her with her eyes wide open...

Ace with a face full of melted and smudged chocolate chip cookies...

Kenzie holding Sophia...

We had a "Chocolate Bomb" birthday cake.  This is one of the few store-bought cakes we like so we get this one for most birthday celebrations.  Sheila made a few dozen chocolate chip cookies too!

As we were cutting up the birthday cake, this butterfly sat down on the table in front of me and just stayed there for awhile so I grabbed a camera...

Seeing this photo of me sitting at the table reminds me that we never did get to play any games of Dominoes.   I guess there was too much going on with more active games.  

The rain held off until sometime after everyone left and we had cleaned up the entire yard.  I wasn't feeling all that great because I was still recovering from a bit of heat exhaustion the previous day but I still had a really nice time!  I was definitely low-energy on this day though.

I wish we could entertain at home far more often than we do.  Scheduling anything with our friends and family on the few summertime weekends is an almost impossible task so we don't get to entertain in our backyard nearly often enough.  This particular annual barbeque is always a nice day though!