The birthday girl and Uncle Gilbert
Mom’s 80th birthday party yesterday was a great success. Mom’s brother, Uncle Gilbert, came in from Florida for the festivities, and other members of the Neal clan also traveled from far and wide to attend, including cousin Beth from Florida, cousin Gib from Chicago, Dave and Stacy from Akron, and Peg and Dave from here in New Albany. A host of Mom’s fun-loving friends, from her neighborhood, her bridge club, and her Poker Queens group, also came for enjoy the food and the camaraderie and to extend their birthday best wishes.
Some of Mom's bridge club friends
Kudos to Jim, Cath, Margaret, Kish, Chris, Joe, Richard, Amy and Brittany for their hard work on organizing and decorating the room, moving cars to open up parking spaces, preparing the food, schlepping card tables and chairs, TVs, and flowers, preparing and presenting food, and generally making sure that the guests had a great time. The food was excellent, the set-up was perfect for a birthday gala, and the party house at Jim’s condo association looked great.
Mom's friends and neighbors
Getting to your 80th birthday is no mean feat, and it deserves to be celebrated in style. Having so many close friends and family members gather is a fitting way to mark a significant lifetime milestone, and also showed how many people Mom has touched during her 80 years.
More friends and partygoers
The party ran from 4:30 to 7:30, followed by the traditional hard-nosed games of euchre, tall tale-telling, and good-natured ribbing that inevitably occur whenever the Webner and Neal families get together.
Incidentally, the room was crowded and raucous from start to finish, so I’m not sure that the “Mom Mix” added much to the fun — but it did give cousin Peg and cousin Dave the opportunity to sing along to some of the selections from The Sound of Music. Those incidents alone made the preparation of the Mom Mix worthwhile.
Webner House 