For many of the past birthday dinners we have gone to the same restaurant in Berkeley, Paisan. Yes, it's loud, but the service is lovely, the food is tasty, the kids like it, and they can take a reservation for a large group. This year was slightly different: the group was smaller than in the past. Nona was present in spirit, and Opa sent his greetings from Germany. But, the group was larger in a sense, too: Robin took up a real spot at the table, and commanded her own attention.
It was also different because last week the entire Bay Area was dealing with all the tragedy of the fires up north. While we thankfully haven't been directly impacted by the fires, the smoke was so bad that we all limited our outside time as much as we could. And, for this dinner, this meant sitting more inside than we usually do (which meant it was even louder than usual!).
But, we had a lovely time - Robin was amazing, Clara enjoyed entertaining Robin, and the food and company was as nice as always. I even snuck in a photo of Molly, who is more and more frequently declaring photos off limits. I'm trying really hard to respect that. Really.
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