80th Birthday Celebration Video

Back in December of 2024, my family coordinated a big trip and celebration for my grandpa Mel. Family from all over the United States gathered in Buda, Texas for truly wonderful weekend. See the video below

Birthday Celebration in Buda, Texas

It takes a lot of planning gathering people from all over the country, especially those who haven't been to a certain place. There were travel challenges, flight delays, rental car issues, and coordinating meals and logistics for the day, etc. It's difficult when more people are involved, but even with those challenges, I know not one person would've said it wasn't worth it.

Early stages of making rivels

We did a bunch of activities over the weekend, but most of all the greatest part was hanging out at the house. A family tradition in Mel's family is to make Rivels during for family gatherings. As you can see in the pictures below it is all made by hand, much like pasta. In addition to the Rivels, short rib goes along with it like a soup with delicious broth. This isn't our exact recipe, but you can get the general idea with the link here. As you can see in the picture of Mel, we have ours with short rib and saltine crackers. Some of us also put additional ketchup in the broth.

Mel devouring Rivels

Rivels with short rib are an absolute labor of love, so that took hours to prepare. While my Aunt was preparing the food, some of us went and visited Circuit of the Americas (COTA), since Mel is a big racing fan. Our go-kart hopes and dreams were crushed when we got to COTA. It was raining pretty hard. We still enjoyed walking around and checking out the track.

Even though we were unable to go go-karting, we still had a fantastic day. We watched a little birthday video I put together for Grandpa Mel, opened presents, then had our delicious meal.

All of the family found a bunch of pictures of Mel so we could make this on his special day

Just like the bummer travel logistics, and rain at the track, that didn't deter us from having a good time at all. We could be in a parking lot having the best time. As long as we're with each other is what counts.

The silliness never stops