Birthday sushi binge

 

At the end of September, the Johnson Family celebrated another vivacious year of Vivian. My mom and dad sent her a lovely cheese gift package, and I arranged to have a special cake bouquet delivered at some random point during the day. Vivian actually spent most of her day driving dad to the DMV and taking mom to the dentist after a long, expected night at the airport (trying to get home from California). That evening, however, it was all about Vivian. She asked me to make her a deep dish pizza for dinner, which was once again an adventure in kneading dough and figuring out how many toppings I could pile on top of the crush without turning everything into soup. Afterward, we dropped by Ted and Wally's in the Old Market for some free birthday ice cream for dessert.

On Friday, I took Vivian down to the Eagle's Lodge for her annual birthday jam. The crowd was a little thin, but we still had a fairly decent stock of leads, which was good to see just a couple weeks after Cowtown. Grammy and Grampy had Hannah for the evening, so we were able to dance without juggling babysitting duties.

 

The next day, Vivian and a bunch of our friends went down to Wasabi on Maple Street for a giant sushi binge. We'd been to Wasabi a couple times before, including once for dinner, so we were well-versed in how to order from the all-you-can-eat sushi menu without winding up in the hospital. What we weren't prepared for, however, was all of our food coming to us piecemeal, which meant we spent a great deal of time trying to remember what we'd ordered and eating off one another's plates.

We crashed/recovered afterward at Frank's house, where he'd set up a fire pit for s'mores and random goofing around to wind down for the evening.

 

Jack's birthday was actually also on Saturday, so we took him out for his free round of ice cream on Saturday before our sushi binge. Then on Sunday we took him and Grammy out to dinner at Red Lobster. The next week, Vivian and I dropped by the downtown Farmer's Market for one last time. Winter seems to have nearly snuck up on us, reminding me what it's like to venture outside without a jacket. We stocked up on kale and bok choy and then dropped by the Upstream for lunch.

On Sunday, we finished off our weekend by celebrating our friend Lisa's birthday at church with a "surprise" potluck downstairs.