Merry Christmas to all of us who frequent the Garden Party--whether a regular or just *occasional* poster--or even a lurker, which I was for years! May we remember--all year long--the one whose birthday we celebrate. Peace and Blessings.

Thank you! Beautiful horse, BTW, he's got better hair than I do, LOL. I've been having some problems logging in this morning, I thought Gardenweb had fixed that, but apparently not. So far today I've been carrying old paint cans up from the basement, the County is having their "hazardous waste" clean up on Saturday. I've made coffee, returned some pop cans, weeded the herb garden. Elery is in Jackson picking up some more of his clothes and garage stuff. Yes indeed, the party is going wild here in White Cloud. (grin) We'll have a cookout on Saturday, here at my house. Dave's birthday was the 22nd. Elery and I had an anniversary on the 10th, Ashley's anniversary was the 17th, Elery's son Chris had a birthday on the 24th and Ashley's birthday is June 6. We're having one big cookout and then they're going to help me uncover the pool. We do know how to celebrate here... Party on, dudes and dudettes, and especially my almost, kind of close to, sort of, birthday twin, dedtired. Annie

Oh! Thank you everybody!! ItÂs wet and soggy here, but IÂm having a nice dayÂkids are at school, LOL! IÂm celebrating my 50th birthday today by having all the kids have a "spend the night" guest. WeÂll have spaghetti and birthday cake. Yippee! I AM counting my NYC trip as part of MY birthday celebration, even though it was REALLY for She and I spent 4 days in NYC! We took the Acela train from DC. It was wonderfully civilized! Lindsay liked (Ã la Star Trek) between the cars. Having already done all the obligatory monuments, etc, we got to really travel the city like locals. The first night we stayed at the Hilton on 53rd & 6th (Avenue of the Americas). The other nights we stayed at an apt on 55th and 2nd. WeÂd leave at 8:00 in the morning and didnÂt head "home" until 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. I knew it would be a good trip by bedtime the first day. We wandered upon filming for a We watched on the street for a couple of hours. He never got out of the car, but we were thrilled to see him. Finally we decided to head to our hotel. We walked down the street that had all the trailers. No one was around. Suddenly Nicolas Cage walked out of a trailer, right onto the street right in front of us! We squealed like little school girls! He walked up to us, chatted with us for a few moments (well, HE chatted; we babbled and drooled and shook!). He let me take a picture of . Ugh! I couldnÂt even hold the camera still or see the view finderÂI took a picture when he blinked! He was SOOOO gracious! I LOVE him even more now! But hey, Lindsay was so excited! We could barely sleep that night! We saw Mamma Mia the next day! Fabulous! We spent a day and a half in Central Park (and even ), walked all over the place. We didnÂt actually do a lot of shopping. We wanted to be out on the streets and see the sights! We walked through most of the neighborhoodsÂ.Lower East Side, Chinatown, Little Italy, Nolita, TriBeCa, East Village, Soho, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Meat Packing DistrictÂwe logged some serious miles! We tried to eat something in every neighborhood. We were stuffed by the time we left! Our last was breakfast at Max BrennerÂs, (OMGosh!) Âall the time!! We had a GREAT time! A wonderful 13th (for her) and 50th for me!! Thank you again for the wonderful wishes!

Thanks everybody. Actually, my birthday's on the 24th, but I appreciate your wishes. Harry got me a new stove for my birthday. Well, I picked it out and dragged him to the store but, hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. It's beautiful!