VERY POST BIRTHDAY Blog

SOOOORRYYY!! I'm not sure how many of you read this daily (because I don't get many comments) but if you've all been waiting-or even if you haven't- here is the post birthday edition of Our World.
Jen- Yes the party did me in. Well not exactly the party but that plus 3 little boys. :):):)

Two of Michael's siblings flew in for the event. (He is the youngest of 7 for those of you who don't know.) Renee came from California with Mom and Trent flew in from Missouri. The rest of them couldn't make it this time but of course Bill and his family came over from Demorest. So, we still had enough people to call it a party. There were 13 counting my 3 kids, Bill's two teenage girls, and all the adults. Michael knew something special was up because I was being very secretive. So, on Friday night at about 8:00pm Michael comes into the kitchen says, "I think I'll go over to Bill's house and see Mom. They should be back from the airport by now." I'm like- "NO!" Ok, a little too forceful. He asks, "why?" with this sly wicked grin. GGRRR I tried to cover with "because honey they just got back from the airport. They probably want REST not company." He just laughed at me and told me he knew we were hiding something.
The next day he took Judah and Thomas with him to go and meet Mom for brunch and left Gideon and me to set up the party. I promptly put Gideon to bed so that I could set up without him destroying things and thankfully he was ready for a nap. :):)
I however ran around like a "chicken with my head cut off" trying to set everything up and reheating the food in the microwave. I had ordered authentic Mexican food from a catering company in Texas. It had arrived frozen so I had to reheat it. From them I got: authentic (made by hand) tamales (buffalo, spicy buffalo, pork, and spicy lobster); Spanish rice, green salsa, red salsa, and guacamole. I also made homemade corn chips, warmed up refried beans, made a fiesta cheesecake (not sweet, made with Mexican type ingredients to be used as a dip or eaten), and put out some sour cream. I had made the cheesecake and also an angel food cake the night before. The angel food cake was used for the ...CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN!! Those of you who know Michael know how much he likes chocolate. Who doesn't like dipping various things (in our case:strawberries, bananas, graham crackers, marshmallows, pretzels, and angel food cake) into a fountain that is flowing with chocolate? It was a BIG hit! We kept it going for 7 hours and everyone cleaned up almost every morsel on the table to dip. It was also a pretty conversation piece. :):) So glad that I went to the trouble of doing it; and, believe me, it was trouble because I realized too late that I didn't have a big glass bowl to melt the chocolate in the microwave so I had to melt it in my glass 2 cup measuring pyrex thing. It took MUCH longer that way. There is also a learning curve on getting the fountain to run smoothly. thankfully I had allowed for the learning curve but hadn't allowed for the extra 20 minutes it took to melt the chocolate. :):) It still turned out great. They had about 30 minutes of socializing while I finished "steaming" the tamales in the microwave. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food. We all like Mexican, especially Michael's family. I guess it's that growing up in Southern California thing. :):) People shared stories about Michael and some brought pics. :) That was fun. I'm all about the grave stone cakes and the over the hill gags for 40th and 50th birthdays but for Michael I didn't want that. I wanted to celebrate the Lord- the giver of life and thank God for sparing Michael's so many times. :) He really should have been dead in his early 20s. (several times) So, that's what we focused on. Well that and the chocolate fountain. LOL
Anyway, I have gotten behind in blogging because of Resurrection Sunday and then Trent and Renee stayed the night with us Sunday night and we took them back to the airport on Monday morning. We had a lot of fun Sun night. The four of us stayed up LATE and played darts on the dart board I got for Christmas. We also finished the ice cream cake. :):) Hey we were burning all those calories laughing from the dart game. :):)
Anyway, so that's the story. Hope those of you who waited enjoyed it. I could have told several funny moments but I really need to get some cleaning done today. LOL BLESSINGS!- Angela :)