Birthday Bear

Tiffany and Jonathan with their cousin, Barry (middle) in 1993

We celebrated my nephew's birthday yesterday.  I made a ton of teriyaki beef and chicken sticks (with sweet onions, red peppers and zucchini) and green salad.  Mom made her "famous" namasu (pickled cucumbers), macaroni salad and rice. Dennis and Nancy brought a birthday chocolate cake.

It's so hard to  coordinate everybody's schedules but tonight, we all managed to get together to help Bear celebrate.

Art grilling the beef and chicken sticks

Birthday dinner

Barry, often called Bear is the middle child.  He is the sweetest, most modest, loving, responsible guy around, always putting others before himself.  The story that might best illustrate this for me is when his kindergarten teacher saw that Bear had something clutched in his hand all afternoon and asked him what it was.  When Bear unfolded his tiny fingers, she saw that it was a cookie he was saving to give to his older brother when he got home.  Bear is still like that although he and his wife now bring things to share that are more ummm...appetizing.

And so to our cuddly, huggable Bear, Happy Birthday!!!