Everyone Loves Mary - 50th Birthday Celebration

 On Saturday, February 8th, 2025, Mary's Ottawa area friends held a EVERYONE LOVES MARY 50th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION. There was no way I was missing that.  Best part was that it was a surprise party.  Naomi, Axel and Nadie organized a dinner and pottery party at one of the local studios where Mary works.  

Here are some photos of Hebe and I after our surprise arrival. It's hard to surprise Mary, but I think we did.  She might have sprung a leak in her eyes, briefly.

Hebe and I brought a few treats from Montreal.  First, Arta's birthday placements. Second lemon squares and Arta's famous Mrs Field's Cookies.  Life just isn't a party without the table setting and cracking out the best dishes. Sugary treats don't hurt.

As each person arrived at the studio, they got a similar greeting to the one we had when we arrived. "I can't believe you are here.  What a surprise.  It's so great to see you."   Someone finally noted, "I thought I was Mary's best friend", to a full room of Mary's best friends.

Here are a few photos of all the EVERYONE LOVES MARY best friends.

Everyone who attended got to make a pottery heart for Mary to hang on a stand in her garden.  Check out some of the creations below.

Of course there was also some "feting" that went on.  I didn't get photos of everyone who gave a roast/toast.  But here are a few images.

I learned a lot of amazing things about Mary from her friends.  Things I already knew about her character, but in story form.  Stories of how Mary's empathy, kindness, perceptiveness, openness, friendliness and joy had touched and changed them.  Wow. EVERYONE REALLY DOES LOVE MARY, with good reason.

Here was my addition to the fete.  5 Haikus for Mary on her 50th Birthday.

Feel free to leave your own Haiku to Mary in the comments.

Welcome to the antique club Mary.  50th is fabulous.

Love Catherine

Sing-a-long

I'm not sure if this should be the 'miranda broke her arm' post, or the sing-a-long post.  Take note, miranda broke her arm.  Terribly.  She's been laying in the bed healing for a week, and it'll be a couple of weeks before I think that she'll be self sustaining in terms of self care.  Cleaning, opening jars, pulling power cables out of the wall, picking up anything over 1lb.

Ok, I'm doing a quick post on last night.  I've been in a deep survival mode for this past week or ten days.  The community is supporting us even when I have a difficult time accepting help.

Last night, I had "Wonka" with Timothée Chalamet playing in the kitchen as children came home from their activities.  I had it playing, but in french.   

Rejoins-moi

Et tu seras

Dans un monde de pure imagination

It was really uplifting for me, and I was forcing the kids to hear french.  So double fun on my end... probably +1 and -1 for them.  A wash.

As we were starting to get ready for bed at 9:00, Betty pulled out this karaoke microphone stand that she was gifted last christmas.  When you plug it in, it has disco lights that flash to the ceiling, and a little microphone to give that 'rock star' feeling.

She started this thing, and started with 'popular' from wicked.  That drew in Alice to sing beside her.  So of course I start trying to catch some of this on a phone.  I recorded as many of the songs as I could.  Alice knew, and would try to move out of frame most of the time.  Then she came to declare to me "That is only for you and mom.  Nobody else gets to see it!!!".  Ok, I say.  Ok....  

It was the most uplifting time that I've had in months or longer.  Hearing their little voices do 'Suddenly Seymore' from little shop of horrors does especially wonderful things to my heart.  I had to shut it down at 10:00.  We'd been singing for an hour and there is school tomorrow.  I'll share photos as well.  These photos are of the sunset as I was driving home last night.  Also of the drive to school this morning.  If I drive them I usually require one selfie and one group selfie before I'll let them out of the car to go into school.

As I'm uploading these videos I see that youtube is calling them 'restricted' based on copyright.  So I'm not sure how long they'll stay up.  I don't think that Beyonce needs to get paid for my kids singing 'I'm a survivor'.  We'll see if the videos of us doing karaoke stay up.