This mother's heart swells with pride

Yesterday Amanda (AKA Ms. Thang) had her 21st birthday. Naturally, since she comes from a family (at least on the maternal side, I won't presume to speak for her father) of drinkers, we knew that any family celebration would have to be held in a place where one can procure alcohol. We revisited the scene of mom's birthday, and it was good.

Here's the birthday girl sipping on her very first legally ordered drink. It's one of their higher end margaritas, a Cadillac or a Perfecto, I'm not sure which. She originally wanted a frozen mango margarita, which is what I like to drink when I'm not driving, but she got talked into something a little more fancy (stronger).


Also present were family and friends. This is my brother, Luke, his daughter, the Lovely Baby, and my mom, Mom. Contrary to what it looks like in the picture, Lovely Baby is not drinking on Mom's drink; it's all in the camera angle. We don't roll with drinking babies. (Although there's a story about me at that age in O'Hare, also know as the Chicago outpost of Hell, with a pacifier dipped into cocktails that explains many things. But it was the 60s, and those were very different times.)

This is Amanda immediately after downing her first tequila shot. This one was Patron, and she's braver than me. Tequila shots are so not my thing. I prefer mine well hidden in a frozen fruity margarita. I'm such a girl. Amanda's a girl, too, but she's tougher than me, at least when it comes to tequila.

Yep, she's wearing the hat that mom wore on her birthday. You can see that picture in the archives from October 2008, called When She's 64. I can never get the link thing to work right, so I'm not even going to try tonight. Our waiter was informed that it was her 21st birthday, so he carded her, which was cute and made the early morning trip to the DOL to get her a "landscape" driver's license (as opposed to the "portrait" orientation that minors have) worth our while. On mom's birthday, when they brought out the hat, it came with dessert. With Amanda, it came with a shot. That was shot #3. So she had 3 shots of tequila and a strong margarita all over the course of about 90 minutes. For a girl who was pretty damn hammered, I think she looks damn good in this picture.

And we made Darrin wear the hat too. His birthday was on Sunday. Like me, he's old enough not to require a celebration, but I really wanted to see him and get a picture in the hat.

Fortunately for all, and by all I mean me, Amanda did not require the bucket last night, although I made sure it was nearby after she got home and when I put her to bed. She was also not hung over this morning, for which I might hate her if she wasn't my kid. I'd have been puking my guts out and then hung over as hell with that much tequila, but apparently we have different constitutions.