Happy Birthday to my Mom! It’s her birthday today. We had a little birthday bash for her last night at our house. When I say “little”, I mean about 27 people–10 adults and 17 kids for dinner. We cooked up this London Broil, and it turned out so yummy! Of course I didn’t add MSG like the recipe says (who ADDS MSG? I thought we were supposed to avoid that stuff?) and I didn’t have Tarragon vinegar so I used red wine vinegar. I also made these simple oven roasted red potatoes, and some yummy baked beans. I set up extra tables and chairs inside, even though it was finally nice enough to eat outside, but our trees haven’t leafed out yet and we have no shade. So, we told people they could eat outside if they wanted, but most everyone stayed in. After we ate, the kids all scattered and played outside, some downstairs in the extremely messy unfinished basement, and some upstairs. It was so fun to look out and see a dozen kids all playing happily together on the playground. I’m amazed taht the cousins get along so well, and are always so excited to see one another. Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t get them together very often. It was a fun family get together, and I’m glad it went so well.

Speaking of birthdays, I never posted any pictures from Megan’s party back at the beginning of the month. So, here’s her cake.
cake
Made by Julene, the awesome cake decorator. That soccer ball is actually made out of rice crispies. But when Julene asked her husband to “press” the rice crispies into a bowl so they could be soccer ball shaped, he took that job a bit to seriously and smashed them together using a jar to really pack them tight. When we cut into the soccer ball, it was SOLID rice crispy–not even crispy anymore, since there was no air.
It was enough to break a tooth on, but the kids still ate it.

The girls had a great time, , and it turned out to be a fun, and relatively easy for me, party. A funny thing happened with her present, though. I was going to give her an MP3 player for her birthday. But when her friend’s mom brought over a present for her, I just peeked inside to see what it was, and it was an MP3 player! I couldn’t give her one if a friend was giving her one, too. So, I got a few other things together, and remembered I had a guitar stashed in the closet that I had bought at a garage sale a while back. I gave that to her. She was so excited! And all her friends thought she was SO cool that she got her own guitar, and it was so COOL! Turns out that guitar has a bit of separation at the neck, and we’re going to somehow stabalize it, and I don’t know if it even will stay in tune (so if anyone knows anything about guitar repair, let me know), but I already won cool mom points because all the girls were so IMPRESSED with Megan’s birthday guitar. Even if it doesn’t work out for her, she was cool at the moment, and therefore I was cool, right? I was just glad she was so excited about it.