A Party Anyone? (January 12, 2006)

     At this time of the year we are all used to celebrating.  There are four major holidays in a little over two months:  Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.  In two months, we celebrate two of those major holidays, Christmas and New Years, along with eleven Haggerty family birthdays.  And this year we added another special birthday of a dear friend to that list.

Margaret Shelly

     The special friend we all know in our memories class is Margaret Shelly.   Margaret was absolutely, fabulously gorgeous in her beautiful purple silk lounge ensemble with matching purple suede shoes, purple crown and purple gloves with marabou feathers on January 7, when many of her friends and family joined together to help her ring in her 80^th birthday.  I know that all of us in the class want to add a resounding congratulations to Margaret!

     On November 30, the Haggerty family gathered to celebrate our granddaughter Barbara’s 8^th birthday at our house, with party, balloons, streamers, chocolate cake and, most importantly, chocolate ice cream.

      On December 18, our youngest daughter Kate celebrated her 35^th birthday.  Our oldest daughter Kelly and David and I headed to Rohnert Park to spend the afternoon and evening with Kate and her husband Stephen in celebration of Kate’s special day with dinner at the Red Lion and a party at home. 

     On December 21, Gerri, my husband David’s dad’s significant other celebrated her 95^th birthday. We sent her a bouquet and we are heading to Oceanside this month to celebrate her birthday along with David’s dad’s 90^th birthday on January 30.  David’s sister Deb is also flying down for the celebration.  We offered to fly them up here so we could celebrate with the whole family, but they haven’t flown in fifteen years and weren’t eager to try flying with all the new security regulations.   Do any of us consider flying fun anymore?

     We had two separate Christmas celebrations on December 23 and December 25 at our house, which included all our grown kids, spouses, grandkids and several friends. 

On Christmas Eve we celebrated with family and friends at the Veterans’ Memorial Center at the Davis Community Meal.   On New Year’s Eve we thoroughly enjoyed watching the musical production of Mame and having a buffet dinner and music and dancing that followed at the Davis Musical Theater Company with our dear friend Helen.

     On January 2, we headed back to Rohnert Park to celebrate Stephen’s (Kate’s husband) birthday.  We started with the party at home and then headed to Cattlemen’s for another tasty dinner.

     This coming weekend we will be celebrating our son William and his wife Claudia’s fortieth birthdays. His real birthday is January 8 and hers is February 9, but since they are both turning 40 we decided to roast them together with a family celebration at our house. 

     On January 12 (today) we celebrate our step-granddaughter’s birthday, she is 11 and it is also my brother-in-law Rich’s 63rd birthday. Rich’s mother Evelyn’s 87^th birthday is January 28.  On Jamuary 24, my sister-in-law Deb is celebrating her 54^th birthday with dinner out with us and husband Rich and mom-in law Evelyn.

    Party anyone?  If you don’t feel like you have enough celebrations between November 30 and January 30, come see the Haggerty’s. We have a few celebrations lined up and we’d be happy to include you.