Happy Birthday!

On Saturday 57 of Pop's family, friends and neighbors gathered to congratulate and celebrate 85 wonderful years with him. The party was held at the Lamb's Tavern, in Springfield. It seems that we actually did manage to surprise him!

Phyllis baked the birthday cake, a wonderful, rich chocolate cake made without flour. It tasted like fudge turned into a cake. She and Marian spent most of Friday decorating it. Personally, I thought it looked amazing. The restaurant served it with some wonderful ice cream, though after the party, there was debate about the flavor of the ice cream, so perhaps there were two flavors? Judith baked multiple types of cookies, and brownies. Marian baked butter cookies and supplied after dinner candies.

All of the original (for this purpose) Schrays looked well. We had relatives up from Virginia, out from Chicago as well as the ones more local to the area. The McCullum's came to the party and so did the Ianeri's.

Judith made a collage of photographs taken of Pop from his childhood until recent times. If you are able to enlarge this photo you might be able to see Pop in his Harrison Ford days (circa Indiana Jones), in his Cary Grant days, his proud father and proud grandfather days, traveling, etc. Gloria Jean put together a fantastic album of photographs of Pop and his family. Everyone who saw the album loved it. I beleive that Dan or Frank will be putting together a web site where we can all add our photographs, and look at everyone elses'.

Thank you to everyone who came to the party and helped us celebrate Pop's 85th Birthday.

Our annual crab and spaghetti dinner was made more interesting this year when Grandmom was reminded of the 50+ year old Italian olive oil that Great-grandmom Rubertucci brought back from Italy.

Grandmom got the can and

three generations of Rubertucci women gathered to celebrate. Great-grandmom Rubertucci went to Italy the summer that Grandmom was expecting her third child, my mom, Marian Robinson nee Schray.

It took Pop-pop, Aunt Jude, Mom, and Dad to get the can opened.

After all that effort we got 6 jars of liquid gold from the can.

Isn't it pretty glistening in the sun?

Coming soon... Annie's Irvine graduation

PS (7/25/05) I used my olive oil this weekend to make a tomato, basil, mozzarella salad, and then some pesto, and it didn't kill me, I don't think that I have lead poisoning either. I used too much garlic in my pesto and maybe a smidge too much oil in the tomato, basil, mozzarella salad. But other than that I thoroughly enjoyed my meals. :)