My 50th birthday is December 12th. I had a feeling
that "something" was up, but I never expected a surprise birthday party the day that it happened!
My mom had hand surgery on Friday and I was staying with her for a few days to help her out. On Saturday, Nathan, my son, came over and trimmed up the trees and hedge that is in her backyard. I was doing some things inside for her and supervising the work outside! In the afternoon, Don called and asked if we wanted to come over for barbequed steaks (we were staying in Kathy & Jon's backyard). My mom said that she felt up to it, so I said "o.k."
I didn't see any cars, didn't notice anything unusual but when I walked into the house lo and behold...there were lots of friends to surprise me! If I had of known, I would have made sure that I had make-up on at the least!!! Family, Kountry Kamper family/friends and even Dottie & Lew Anderson, some of our Monaco friends (who had driven up from San Diego) were there to help me celebrate my 50th birthday! It was a lot of fun with great friends and great food. A co-worker of Kathy's made my cake, which was great (except that my name was spelled wrong). I loved the sign on it "Relax I'm
Only Here For The Cake".
I wasn't expecting all the gifts that people brought to me, but I had a lot of fun opening everything! It was almost like Christmas...just a few weeks early!
especially with their stocking hats on their heads, but aren't they cute? Maggie (my kitty) probably won't be here next Christmas because he has a very aggressive form of bone cancer. Nicole (my mom's kitty) has had her picture taken with the hat before. She wouldn't look up and would hardly open her eyes! She's not fond of the hat, that's for sure!
My mom and I went to the 15th annual International Tamale Festival in Indio, CA. My mom had been wanting to go to it, and it happened that we were able to take the opportunity and go! We both had perceptions of what we would find there but it wasn't quite what we had anticipated! Years ago we had gone to a chili cook-off. Each of the booths had samples to hand out, at the Tamale Festival you bought the tamales you wanted to try. They had beef, chicken, and pork as usual, but they also had fruit and chocolate tamales as well! Ironically, one of 
the best tamales we had...came from Temecula which is in our very "own" backyard! I read in the paper that there were over 60 vendors and they were expecting to serve over 120,000 festival goers! I think most of them were there the same day we were! There were lots of people there, that's for sure! One of the last booths we saw, had a line waiting to buy tamales that was *l*o*n*g*. I wonder if they knew something we didn't? It was also a very warm weekend...temps were in the mid 80's...and this is December! Lots of entertainment all around but most of it wasn't under cover so we choose not to sit in the sun to see it! Many of the booths had characters "hawking" their tamales! The chili pepper in the picture with my mom is just one of those! In addition to the tamales, there were also booths selling crafts, leather, jewelry, etc. It was fun to experience, but I'm not 
sure we would go again!
