My sister decided to visit us to celebrate a very momentous birthday.  I won’t embarrass her by saying how old she is but….she is REALLY old 😉 and of course I am the “baby”, so everyone is older than me.

I decided to go all out for her.  I bought her a Happy Birthday banner for her room

Don’t look too close….

Happy BirthBAY????? So much for quality control.  I guess when you only pay $1.98, you can’t expect perfection.

She brought us a bunch of “Thank You” gifts.  Chocolates for me, Nut-Goodies for Gary and all the ingredients for Toll House Chocolate Chip cookies.  She brought all the ingredients for the cookies in a Ziploc bags……in her suitcase.  And I mean all the ingredients…including the two sticks of real butter and EGGS!  She knows I don’t eat REAL butter and usually eat Eggbeaters so she figured she better come prepared.  You wonder what those people at the airport thought when they scanned her luggage.  And the fact that they didn’t break the eggs, that was the biggest surprise.  Kuddos to those luggage handlers and to my sister for knowing just how to pack them so they wouldn’t break.

So the first day we made cookies

Yummy

Nothing better than warm Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies.  That night we took her to one of our favorite restaurants here, Nervous Nellies.  The food was great and lots of interesting things to look at out on their deck where we sat.  When the bill came, she insisted on paying for dinner.  So let me get this straight, it is HER birthday visit, she comes bearing gifts, all the ingredients for home made cookies, you go out to dinner and SHE pays.  And what have you done for her so far?  Oh yah!  You bought her a $1.98 banner that says Happy BirthBay!  Way to go little sis.  You sure know how to show a person a good time.  Man, I better step up my game or she’ll never come to visit again.

The next day we took her shopping, at her request, and we went to the Shell Factory.  If you have never been but want to pick up some mementos of your visit, this is a great place to go.  She is not much of a shopper (I can see we are cut from the same cloth 😉 ), so she finished that up pretty quickly.  We bought her some Subway for lunch (oooooh, you big spender).  That night we went to a restaurant in downtown Fort Myers called

We met an old friend of both of ours.  I worked with him at NCL back in the day.  He was one of our Actuaries.

The place inside was pretty cool   and reminded us of Minnesota with the skiers on the ski lift and the dead animals on the wall.  Here people have giant dead fish on their walls, none of those cute furry animals.  We had a nice visit with our old friend and a great dinner, we even had left overs

The next day was her official Birthday.   I had to get my game going on to make sure she had a good and memoriable Birthday.   I started the day by making her a birthday cake…from scratch….Ok, out of the box but I had to add the eggs, oil and water, that is kind of like from scratch.

It’s the first cake I’ve made in 4 years, since we owned the house.  Guess I’ll try out this rubber pan that came with the condo 

 This container was an old Tupperware mixing bowl that belonged to Gary’s mom.  They don’t make them like this anymore and it worked like a charm.

Then being the good sister that I am, I even let her lick the beaters,

 What a nice sister.

I made her a marble cake  Looks pretty good.  Lets hope the pan doesn’t melt.

Waala!

Yummy bundt cake

Ok, Ok.  Don’t look too closely.  Yes, that cake is half eaten.  I forgot to take a picture of it when it was done.  Boat ride time called and I was in a hurry :).  I didn’t have any kind of a cake pan holder but this collapsible bowl does the trick

We took her for a boat ride so she could see the houses on the canals. 

She has skin like mine, so big hats are a must :).  We drove over to some canals with really expensive houses.  If you’re going to look at houses on the canals, might as well look at the really cool ones.  We saw this pontoon boat with 3, count em, 3 motors on the back 

We saw this other house with the really neat fountain the water was coming out of the pile of rocks.  Pretty cool.  We also saw another house that was getting a landscaping make over.  They were planting these palm trees   I don’t think I have ever seen these kind of palms with a trunk that looked like that.

Then we saw this palm  which is called a Travelers Palm and is actually not a palm at all but related to the bird of paradise plant. Pretty cool though.  It was the first one we have seen down here.

By the time we were done canal cruising, the wind had picked up a little and so had the traffic.  My sister decided to jump into the co-pilot seat to keep from getting wet from the spray 

When we got home it was time for her favorite alcoholic drink….Brandy Alexanders with ice cream   I added the finishing touch with the cherry. They were really good.  Oh!  See those flowers in the back ground?  She received a beautiful flower arrangement  Ok, they weren’t from me :(.  You don’t expect me to think of everything do you?  They came from her family, what nice kids 

That night we went to Lobster Lady for her favorite meal.  The dinner didn’t start out so well though.  We arrived at 5 and they asked us if we had called in seating, we admitted we didn’t, so they asked us if we wanted to sit outside.  Ok, but there was one little problem.  It was raining out.  They agreed to keep us under their overhang and away from the dripping water.  Good, we’ll take it.  The waitress came over and took our drink orders and then brought back warm rolls and a maple flavored butter.  Man, those looked super yummy.  But no silverware or plates to put the rolls on.  Think that’s going to stop us from eating warm, fresh rolls?  Heck no!  We grabbed the rolls and started dunking them into the butter, making sure there was no double dipping going on of course.  We placed our meal orders, big sis ordered some stone crabs, Gary and I ordered a meal that contained bacon.  After a long wait, the waitress came back and said they burned the bacon so it would be a little longer.  Huh, hope the rest of meal isn’t ready and getting cold while they cook more bacon.  Luckily, when the meal arrived everything was still warm and not over cooked.  My sister dug into her crab.  A little too robustly though, she ended up cutting a couple of fingers in the process.  Poor Happy Birthday Girl :(, but the food was real good. They offered her a complementary desert as it was her birthday but she turned it down as my delicious cake was waiting for us at home.  We were there a couple of hours but it gave us a chance to chat and enjoy the meal.  By the time we left there were a lot of people standing outside waiting for a table.  I guess it is a popular spot to go.  We’ll have to come back again.

When we got home I cut her a big piece of cake, put some cool whip on it and she drizzled some chocolate sauce over it.  Can’t forget the birthday candles

Happy Birthday To You!

And I even sang!  She probably wished I left out the singing part but I had to give her the full effect Birthday experience didn’t I?

We dropped her off at the airport pretty early, like 4:30 A.M.  We were sorry to see her go, we hoped she had a good time.  I think the cat was glad to have his room back.

My Bed, go away!