Celebrate Life - Not Age

Birthdays. You can either look forward to them with trepidation or embrace them as a celebration of life. I have always chosen to embrace mine. In fact, I have found that it takes at least a month to properly celebrate.

Mine started the day before the actual date of my birth with a gift from our beloved Illini football team of their fourth straight victory for the year. ( incidentally they are currently 6/0).

The actual day of my birthday began delightfully with a phone call from my Grand Niece and her parents singing Happy Birthday. By the end of the day all of the children and grandchildren had weighed in with their wishes. After church we were scheduled to participate in the annual Silver Spokes Golf Outing. Said outing was not created as a party for Moi, but since it was on my birthday, and since I had won the privilege of signing the cards for longest drive and closest to the pin as "the Birthday Babe", and since my friends arranged a birthday tiramasu for my dessert, it will go down in the books as one of my best birthday parties ever. What better way to celebrate the continuation of your life than by doing what you most love to do
surrounded by the best  friends in the world?

My real party was supposed to be the next day with our annual Jean's birthday bike ride on the Lakefront bike trail. Unfortunately it was rainy and cold and bike riding was out of the question. So I had to opt for lunch out with the friends who were to join us. It was a lovely lunch and the well wishes and love continued helped to compensat for the indefinite postponement of the anticipated ride.

About a week later the weather cleared and the sun once again shone brightly on my parade and we were able to find a day when our friends were available. I don't fully appreciate what a wonderful thing this tradition is until I am into the ride. I am so thankful that we live near the most beautiful city in this country if not in the world. Chicago has an amazing lakefront, every inch of which is public access surrounded by beautifully maintained parks. We began at Belmont Harbor, stopped at Navy Pier for lunch and proceeded on past McCormick Place to the Fallen Firefighters Memorial park before returning to our point of entry.

We took a moment out to remember Chicago's first responders who have fallen in the line of duty. I am sure that many Chicagoans and certainly even more suburbanites do not even know that there are two beautiful parks and monuments set aside for their fallen first responders, both police and fire fighters.  What a great day and a great way to officially end the birthday marathon.



Northerly Island formerly known as Mieg's Field