Four Score and Three Years Ago

My sweet mother-in-law celebrated her 83rd birthday today.  Her actual birthday is tomorrow - she is one day older than Martin Luther King, Jr.  Let that sink in for a moment . . .

This woman is amazing.  Truly.  Can I sign up to look like this at 83???

It won't happen.  For one thing, I have no problem doing nothing.  No problem a'tall.  My MIL gets twitchy if she isn't . . . well . . .  doing something.  Anything.  It has to be productive, even!  (Indeed it makes me look bad.  Very bad.)  She works, volunteers at the hospital, teaches Sunday school, walks daily and travels across the continental U.S. to visit with any various assortment of four children, twenty grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Me?  I . . . . uh . . . well . . . . I . . . . blog.  Does that count as productive?

We enjoyed a pizza party and in lieu of birthday cake, horked down her favourite:  Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

The whole idea here was to make a stack of eight doughnuts, and then another stack of three, with corresponding candles.  It looked better in my mind than it actually turned out - but she was happy, so I'll take it.  Notice how bent out of shape Chase is in that first pic.  He's going through a phase of feeling offended at everybody else's birthday because it isn't HIS.  It'll be a long four months for him.  And us.

I can't say enough how grateful I am that my MIL is who she is.  She enjoys everything about our family and rarely turns down an invitation to join us.  She is supportive, funny, kind, respectful and could not be more proud.

Who wouldn't love somebody like that?