Sarah’s birthday was August 3rd, but we waited until she arrived with Adam and Caleb on Monday to celebrate. Matt, Betsy, and Skylar came to dinner, and we had a great time. From elementary school on, the only birthday cake Sarah ever wanted was an ice cream cake, and that was her request again. There were three candles for 33 years. 🙂

Skylar wasn’t quite sure what to make of having another toddler in our house. Initially she told Caleb that the toys were “mine,” but she soon recovered, and they had a lot of fun running up and down our driveway together, shouting and laughing.

Skylar kept losing one shoe, and eventually was running barefoot. I was just glad neither of them fell!

But this is my favorite photo of the evening –the two of them on our poor glider at the bottom of the driveway that’s waiting to be refinished.

Here’s the card I made for Sarah. Her personal “symbol” is a tree, and she has a wonderful one designed by Adam on her business cards and website. There’s a tree hanging over their bed, a colorful tree that hung over the fireplace in Ashland, and one on her favorite totebag. When I bought the “All Seasons Tree” die by Simon Says , I knew it would be on her next birthday card.

I’m linking this up at the Moxie Fab Birthday Card challenge. It’s the last of the white woodgrain cardstock that came in a Simon Says card kit mounted onto a green Memory Box card. The sentiment is an old wooden stamp from A Muse that I’ve had for years stamped onto one of Papertrey’s banner dies.

Yesterday, all the cousins (but one who couldn’t come) gathered at Conesus Lake. We don’t think they’ve ever been all together in one place before. They arrived from Illinois, Arizona, Oregon, Vermont, and Louisana as well as locally. The only damper on the day was the my mother-in-law was too ill to join us. She had been looking forward to this day for months! But we got great photos. First, one of all the cousins and their children.

A pretty good-looking group, if I do say so myself!

And then one of all of us. I’m amazed that we actually got one with everyone (except Caleb) looking at the camera with a smile on their face, and their eyes open!

Tomorrow Adam heads back to Chicago. Sarah and Caleb are staying for the last two days at the lake (we drive back and forth each day), and we’ll be driving them home. We’ll leave sometime on Sunday and spend one night on the road. Tracy and I are planning to spend a week in Chicago, helping to unpack a house full of boxes and get everything settled. Once we get back home, my brother is coming for a few days.

I have a few posts to put up for the time we’re away, but I won’t have much time to visit blogs or comment. I’ll be sure to catch up with all of you toward the end of August.

Today is our 40th anniversary. Last night we both agreed it surely hasn’t felt like 40 years—we can’t be THAT old! But it is, nonetheless, and we’ve had our big anniversary trip already. But we didn’t want the day to pass without marking it in some way, so a bit later we’re off to Seneca Lake with our good friends, Bob and Cathy. We have two wineries to check out, and a farmer’s market I want to explore. Then we’ll have dinner at Suzanne’s Fine Cuisine, a restaurant highly recommended by friends and in the book, Summer in a Glass, which we both finished reading this month.

I thought I’d post this card tonight with a few photos of our day, but I want to link it up to the CASology challenge for this week, and the link closes before we’ll get home. I recently discovered this challenge on Cassandra’s blog, but haven’t had much time to play along this month.*

I cased the design for this card from Nora on A Creative Touch. The woodgrain cardstock and the chipboard hearts both came from a Simon Says Card Kit. The die is also Simon Says, and the sentiment is from Papertrey Ink’s “Live Love Life.” The gold paper I’ve had in my stash for years. (The store where I bought it closed at least 10 years ago.) I love it, and this is the last piece of it.

The inside sentiment (I forgot to photograph it before I wrote a note inside) reads: “A good life is a collection of happy moments,” and we’ve had 40 wonderful years of happy moments together. There’s no one I’d rather spend time with! I’ll be back tomorrow, hopefully with a few shots of a day in the Finger Lakes (though it’s a bit drizzly now), and a 52/50 update.

*Great update on our friend, Mike! He was released from the ICU Friday night, and is walking around the nursing station, eating real food, and joking with us all. He’s still very tired, and will need some weeks of rehab, but a complete recovery is within reach! Thanks again for all your thoughts and prayers. 

It’s a day to celebrate fatherhood here in the States. Two of my three favorite dads are here with me today, which makes for a good celebration. Matt, Betsy, and Skylar were here for brunch, and later we’ll be going out to dinner. It’s raining (again), but at least we don’t have the flooding that’s plaguing the middle of the country.

I think I got Adam’s card in the mail just in time. Hopefully, it arrived in Oregon before today. I think it’s my favorite.

The dark brown cardstock came from the June Simon Says card kit. The Absolutely die and awesome stamp are also from Simon Says, and the Thickers are Amy Tan for American Craft. I don’t often use Thickers on a card, but it worked well here.

The materials for the next card (for Tracy) almost all came from the June kit except for the map paper which was from an old October Afternoon collection called “Boarding Pass.” It started with this inspiration card from Kristina Werner, though I ended up in a totally different place.

The card that holds the sentiment (from a Kelly Purkey set called “Dude”) is from a collection of cards by Basic Grey. Both the pad of cards and the stamp set were part of the June kit. I forgot to take a photo of the inside of the card, but I used two tickets from Papertrey’s set called “Big Ticket Basics.” They seemed to fit the theme perfectly. I coated the heart with some Glossy Accents.

I stuck with the same theme for Matt’s card, using a different map from the “Boarding Pass” collection. This card was inspired by one of Nicole Heady’s cards for a Papertrey release party awhile ago.

The plane which I colored with Copics and cut out came from “Fly Away” and neatly fit over a printed plane in the patterned paper. The sentiment is from the Boy Basics series by the same name. The last two cards meet the CASual Friday Challenge this week:  MAPQUEST.

And the last card also meets this week’s Simon Says Challenge:  TRANSPORT.