As usual, I had a birthday “season” this year. It started with lunch with my BFF, Liz. We never know what to give each other for our birthdays so, several years ago, we decided to treat each other to an upscale restaurant that we both like. That was a great idea. Now we never have to wonder, “What shall I give her for her birthday?” Instead, we say, “When are you available to go to Annie Gunn’s for your birthday lunch?” We choose a weekday, when the restaurant is less busy, then we have a delicious lunch and spend 2-3 hours talking with each other at the restaurant. We both love it.

The next event was sharing my traditional birthday Vienna Torte with Kari’s family. (Recipe from Grandma L.–thank you, Grandma!) Vienna Torte is a chiffon cake with a custard frosting, and it’s a little tricky to get the butter at just the right temperature for the filling to “set” properly, but I love that dessert so much, it’s worth the effort. A chiffon cake is far too much for Ted and me to eat, so it’s great to share it with other people.

Here’s a picture of almost all of us ready to eat my birthday cake. Ted’s piece is at the end of the table, waiting for him to take a picture of us.

My last birthday celebration this year was with Kathy, who met me for what we call one of our “Columbia days.” Our Columbia Days go back 15-20 years (we haven’t been counting). Meeting in Columbia means we each drive only half the distance to each other’s houses. Over the years, we’ve established some loose traditions: one of us treats us to lunch and the other treats us to dinner. In honor of my birthday, Kathy treated me to the day. We start with lunch at Bob Evans (our meeting point) and spend at least two hours talking there. If you’re familiar with Bob Evans, you know they have a big breakfast/lunch crowd and are deserted by 12:30 or a little later, so we aren’t keeping anyone else from being served while we catch up with each other.

After that, we park in downtown Columbia (we always bring a supply of quarters for the parking meters) and walk the length of the downtown area and back, stopping to browse in each of our favorite stores. This time, there was a new store with all kinds of kitchen things, and we probably spent 30-45 minutes getting to know what they have and even buying a few things we’ve each been looking for but hadn’t found elsewhere.

When we’re tired of walking and browsing, we finish with a stop at The Candy Factory, where they make their own chocolate for the delicious candies they sell. Armed with a few pieces to eat immediately, and more to take home for Ted and Annette, we head for the mall, where we spend the rest of the afternoon sipping a cold beverage from the food court, eating our selected pieces of candy, and talking some more.

The time flies and, even though we’ve never run out of things to talk about, we eventually realize that we better get some dinner and start driving home if we want to be home by 10:30-11:00 pm. This, time, we were running late, so we decided to get something fast at Steak ‘n’ Shake. Their food is still the same and the prices are still reasonable (i.e., “relatively inexpensive”), but their small shakes have been greatly reduced in size! Large shakes used to be the size of the water glass in the photo and the small ones were about half that size. These were barely one-third the size of the large shake. We had ordered two small shakes, but they were so small, we each ordered a second one.

Annette came along with Kathy this time and visited with her son while Kathy and I spent our Columbia Day together. Annette met us at Steak ‘n’ Shake, where we compared how much candy we’d bought at The Candy Factory. Kathy’s bag (including the candy for her and for me) is the small one. I guess Annette was really hungry for good chocolate!

Kathy recently had a distressing experience, and I wanted to make her smile, even if just for a few moments, so I brought her a gag gift.

I bought the largest panties Wal-Mart had, because I knew she didn’t just have to “put on her Big Girl Panties” to get on with her life–she needed BIG Big Girl Panties to deal with the situation. She laughed and smiled for several minutes. Mission accomplished.

I love my birthday season. I have such good times celebrating with with my friends and family and it’s less than a year until I can do it again. Yay!