Celebrating a 90th Birthday

Happy Monday, friends! I am back from a whirlwind 36 hour trip to Jacksonville where Sophia and I celebrated my grandmother’s 90th birthday. Six years ago I was lucky enough to celebrate my other grandmother turning 90 (you’ll see her in photos below and 96 now!) and this time I was lucky enough to bring Sophia! Gary and Mason were missed, but with such a short trip, I think taking only one of the kids was the best thing to do.

I have learned in the very few flights that I have taken with a child that keeping them occupied is KEY! I can’t tell you how many new activities I bought Sophia in the hopes of just keeping her still! The Dollar Tree came in clutch!

We flew in right before lunch on Friday and went straight to my cousins house. I feel really lucky to still have friends and family there because we always have somewhere welcoming to stay! I don’t know why, but Chick-Fil-A just hits different down south so that’s what I got us for lunch and then Sophia immediately wanted to get in the pool! We took it easy on Friday night and my cousin has a daughter a year older than Sophia, so they played while we ate some amazing sushi and after we got the kids to bed we watched Luckiest Girl Alive. I thought it was so good and Mila Kunis was fantastic!

Saturday was the day of my grandmother’s birthday but we had the morning to ourselves! My cousin has a super fancy coffee machine and I’m confident that I had the best cappuccino of my life! I decided to take Sophia on a nostalgic little tour since I had to get a few things and I felt like she was old enough to actually understand it. We stopped by the house I grew up in and pretty much went back to until I was 25 and then I showed her my elementary school. Since she’s starting kindergarten next year she totally “got” this is where mommy went to kindergarten!

Both my grandmother’s kept looking at Sophia and thinking she was me.

I get really emotional seeing my grandmother’s – it’s hard because I’m not there, so seeing them once every year (and in this case I hadn’t seen them in 3 years because of the pandemic) it was a shock to see how much has changed. All that to say, I am so immensely grateful to have been able to share this with Sophia because I know that she will remember meeting her great-grandmother’s – more-so than when she was 7 months old. The celebration at the nursing home had immediate family and then we celebrated with a party at my cousin’s house.

I apparently did not get the “dress in dark colors memo” for Florida 🙂

Even though my grandmother wasn’t at the party, my uncle put together such a special video highlighting her life thus far and everything from the 1920’s to now…to my sweet little Mason who is apparently the spitting image of my dad when he was little!

What was especially amazing is to be surrounded on such a happy occasion with my cousins and family, most of whom I don’t get to see very often. I am so so happy that I was able to make this trip happen, that Gary held down the fort with Mason back home and now I can’t wait to figure out our next trip down to Jacksonville…hopefully for longer than a weekend!