A few photos from the partay

My cousin Heather, a photog of the highest degree, posted her beach pictures before I could even get to mine to delete all the ones that are especially bad of me (we took over 300 pictures and this activity ought to hone the mass down considerably). So here are a few, mainly from the pizza party we threw in honor of my dad's 70th birthday (which is next week, but we love an excuse to party).

I made the pizza dough the day prior, forcing my own dad, whose birth we were to celebrate, to knead much of it until his arms were in danger of falling clean off. I went on and on about how I wished I'd packed my stand mixer. "You say that everywhere we go" Jeremiah pointed out. It's true, God how I love my Kitchenaid! Pizza dough requires a LOT of kneading, and a gathering of that size requires a lot of pizza dough.

On the following night Kevin called up his pizza making skills from back in the day when he worked for Tony Scalzo at Tony's Pizza. Tony taught him how to shape and throw the dough and warned him to stay away from his daughter. Kevin mastered the dough arts and dated Tony's daughter, too. What a rule-breaker that guy is. We got a little nuts in the kitchen with myriad toppings, beer and margaritas. The pizza was delicious, all that kneading really paid off.

My cousin Lauren (you remember Lauren, she's a new mommy again, to Sylvia), evidently misunderstood the type of party we'd planned and thought we were having a rave; she provided all the children with glowsticks, but, happily, no X. Also, she brought those foamy things I keep seeing at Michael's and wondering "what does one do with those?" Steve and my nephew Christopher knew just what to do with them.

After we'd eaten all the pizza and polished off a bucket of margarita mix (on the way home Jeremiah said to me 'there were margaritas?') it was time to interrupt the cribbage game dad had going with his grandchildren to force him to eat chocolate cream pie, an old birthday favorite of his. We didn't have birthday candles so a 12" taper had to do. We sang Happy Birthday, presented my dad with a cool new kite, Joy threw whipped cream at Michael's face (so typical), and then most of us retired to the side porch where the menfolk smoked some cigars and drank scotch while we told Michael all the novels she needs to read RIGHT NOW. By the time the conversation turned from Harper Lee to bot flies and cigars were stumps, we just started throwing glowsticks at each other. Then it was discovered that the glowsticks packed a much greater punch when winged through the ceiling fans. I found myself unable to resist biting into one. It changes the color...they're oddly crunchy.

My mom told me that my niece's friend, also Lauren, had one burst open on her and I did a little worried teeth-sucking thing and said "oooooh, they're filled with mercury". To my delight mom said "really?" Then I went to bed.