ninety one

Today is my grandma's 91st birthday.

Yesterday, we spent part of the afternoon with her to have some tea and cake, go for a little walk and just enjoy being together. Totally worth the drive.

Visiting Grandma in a crowd often makes it difficult for her to hear and converse. And as with each year that is passing, I find she is reverting more often to Dutch (her first language) and I rely more and more on my mom for translation. But yesterday, Grandma was sharper and wittier than I'd seen her in years. She was fully present, speaking a lot in English, even cracking jokes.

(This year we decided not to gather the extended family on one day, but instead to plan for each family to visit her on different weekends. That way we would be less likely to overwhelm her and she could celebrate her birthday for weeks and weeks! Good call.)

Here are a few pics, adding a generation at a time...




Of course, half the fun of being together is watching the little people. It was especially fun to watch Eliana (almost 9 months) and her cousin Gideon (12 months) interact.





I took a couple of videos to capture the various things happening in the room. This one catches the end of her birthday song... it was grandma's idea to start the "How old are you now" verse. I love that.



Happy 91st birthday, Grandma.