Birthday Bookend Celebration. My Dad turns 85 on Wednesday, which is a difficult day to round up friends to celebrate together, so we're doing weekend bookend celebrations, with perhaps just he and I celebrating on the actual day. Today we're going to a corner art garden in Sonoma that we pass all the time and had no idea it was a 'destination' with people traveling from abroad just to see it. It's called the "Cornerstone Festival of Gardens" and the feature I've noticed most passing on the road is the tall blue tree, yes blue, the one at the head of this entry.

...so we went! What a lovely garden and galleries. We truly enjoyed the day. Wish I had an extra $30K or so for some of the more fantastic sculptures. I guess I'd better add in some for a house with a garden to display them as well! My MegaMillions Friday ticket was NOT the winner however (I got a free one as a promotion).

We started the morning with my now famous breakfast pizza and I used some special china with leafed-gold wheat fronds decorating it. My first neighbor here gave me this special set of china when she was moving out to be closer to her grandchildern in So. Cal. She said she noticed I have a lot of events, and thought I could use them. At that time I was the Group Leader for RESULTS Marin, lobbying for the elimination of hunger worst aspects of poverty, and I had frequent partner planning sessions for press conferences, lobbying and letter writing campaigns. The words seemed to flow better with some warm drinks and hot raspberry turnovers or the like served on the gift of this nice set after that. The china has matching teacups which sit in a little circle on the side of the plate. This morning my Dad commented on how nice it was to keep having morning surprises like this. We had a good Breakfast Tea (Republic of Tea) along with the pizza.

After enjoying the Cornerstone Festival of Gardens, I picked up a birthday cake at a delightful little bakery in Sonoma, Scandia Bakery. An 'Entirely Chocolate' cake with a Happy Birthday Charles written in yellow and and 8 and 5 candle spots for when we were ready to light.

We took the cake to Rin's Thai where Linda, Yalda, Olivia and I celebrated Dad's 85th kick-off week! Erika is coming up next weekend to celebrate, so truly there will be fun bookends for Dad. OH! and Dad reported, with a sparkle in his eye, that one of his favorite lady friends gave him a KISS while he was home picking up his mail! Now what's to beat that??!