Happy Birthday!

We serenaded Deb for her Birthday yesterday. It started with a simple idea at 7:00 AM when Abbey came down to the kitchen for coffee before we went out for a walk ("Let's send a Zoom invitation out to some friends."), morphed into IT terror ("Do we have a better PC [than Dad's laptop] that can handle an HDMI cable to attach to the television?" and "Why is the $#@&% laptop restarting, it is ten until 6:00?"and "Annie, run and get the iPad, we are off-line and all our friends are waiting to sing to Mom!"), and ended with Joyful Noyse as more than fifty voices echoed across cyberspace and settled into a grateful corner of Bedford, MA.

Screen capture by Ted Day, El Paso

The shock was predictably, well, a shock!

Post-Covid, pre-move family room.

What followed was 50% mayhem and 100% love from all corners of Boston and the U.S..

Video courtesy of Nancy Nash Watkins, an original Chickee and friend of Deb since New Canaan High School (filmed on location in Kentfield, CA)

We then settled into dinner, followed by cake (baked, filled, and frosted to perfection by Anne and Abbey), and accompanied by the traditional Williams Family princess-themed balloons (Paul and I filed for, and were granted, an exemption several years ago). Paul also did a turn with cyber-wishes, soliciting his company Slack channel and personal network for birthday wishes sent from around the world to Deb. And, yes, that is a surgical mask on the counter behind Anne! We save the N-95 "top gun" for trips out into public.

Our hastily-assembled sing-along relied on my email contacts and a few cobbled-together addresses from Debbie's computer to maintain the surprise, so I am sorry that we were not well-organized on getting this out to you all. If any of those who attended have a screenshot, we would love to see more: around 40 separate addresses were on the Zoom, and I know we left several others stranded in the "waiting room" after things went crazy (our apologies).

It is already a little quieter here as we prepare for the Summer ahead, but we have loved the past two weeks of having all the kids here and taking walks, actually using the kitchen to cook and bake things, keeping Starbucks busy, playing "Apples", and just hanging out.

Love to you all!