Today we went to my cousin Kathy's to celebrate a couple of family birthdays. Now, with Dad feeling the way he is, we knew he wasn't gong to go. He always had a low tolerance for kids, and that just advanced with his age. Now, with the Cancer, there's just no reason to put him through that. But what was surprising is that Dad said Mom should go. So Carol & I drove into the city to pick up Mom and drove out to Hawthorn Woods.

All in all, it really was a nice, relatively quiet evening. Perhaps it was due to people trying to handle Bruno's broken hip and related health problems, Myrina's mom in End-Stage Alzheimer's, and Dad's Cancer. The main reason for the get-together was Kathy's daughter Sam's 15th birthday, as well as my cousin Jimmy & Myrina's daughter Abigail's 4th birthday coming up next month, as well as cousin Mario's birthday (but I didn't catch which one it was - I think it was 12). The hit of the evening was Nathan. Nathan is the 6 month old son of Kathy's husband Al's brother Eugene and wife Jennifer. This kid was great. I've never seen a kid that was just so calm. He loves just playing by himself. In fact, at one time during the evening, there was no one in the living room at all - except Nathan who just played with his toys in the middle of the floor. Jennifer (not Nathan's mom - this is a different Jen - daughter of Al's cousin Diane... are you getting this yet?) played with him for quite a while and just kept him occupied. He was just a delightful kid.

We couldn't stay around too long - Mom needed to get back to Dad, so we only stayed about 3 hours and headed back to the city. It was snowing pretty good as we headed down the Tri-State Tollway. It's the first snow of the season - but no accumulation. The snow was more of the "snow pellet" type - no flakes.