This is how we celebrate 18

pumpkins 2007,

Yesterday was my son's 18th birthday. We celebrated it traditionally, for us. As we've done most every year for a very long time, we had our annual birthday pumpkin carving party.

Aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents came for lunch. It just so happens that this year I may have served the best Sunday dinner of my life, so far. Not fancy, but delicious. This pork roast recipe is a good one. Add homemade apple sauce and garlic mashed potatoes, and well, it's poetry. Poetry with a good green salad, and bread, and some fantastic Dominican beans as well.

After lunch, there's gifts, and cake and ice cream, done in that order so that the more elderly grandparents can head home. Then the rest of us head to the back yard to carve our pumpkins.

And every year, we end up with a picture like the one at the top, and like this.

Here's another -- one of our best.

It was a good day -- a milestone in fact. I couldn't ask for a better son. I can imagine being a better parent -- there's even some things I'd do differently, if I could do it again. But I wouldn't have him be anyone else. He's smart, funny with a dry wit, and comfortable with who he is.
Next year, if he chooses a distant college, we'll miss him - but we'll probably still carve pumpkins to celebrate his day!