Happy Birthday (You're Like a Whole Year Older Than Me . . . Sort Of . . . :) to You!

It's the big day, the big decade switch! I don't think either one of us is too worried about it, but we're *supposed to be,* so I jest :) Due to the recent birthday of our teen, we were able to modify the decorations to fit a new theme--by adding the letters DAD to the circus-themed birthday sign :) Graysen also re-crepe-papered the hallway greeting from "Gabby" to "dad." And decorating complete!



At the breakfast table, Mr. B found a gift bag containing two Arbuckle's brand coffees . . . one whole beans (we don't actually have a grinder, but that's beside the point) and one pre-ground to suit his fancy French press coffee mechanism. The house smelled wonderful with that brewing!

In the meantime, as you can see . . . the blina girls were doing their thing! Grandma J completed the task in half the time because Gabby was her blina buddy. She commented on how much fun it was to have someone to talk to at the stove . . . I'm okay with some of these food traditions skipping a generation--especially when these food traditions are oftenest performed in the morning hours. This is not my prime time for food prep or pretty much anything else :) But oh how yummy that blina was with chokecherry honey drizzled on top! Most everyone else went for the syrup, but I like to mix things up a little :)

Breakfast birthday picture (most of our plans revolved around feeding the birthday boy, so I had to get some pictures of the food :)

Normally, we open gifts in the afternoon after singing the happy song and eating the birthday dessert. However, Buck was ready for gifts right after breakfast, and the kids were excited to reveal their secret purchases in the light of day :)

Buck was very happy with the gifts he was given. Almost all were related to decking out his birthday gun with fun accessories. He was only missing a sight-thingy and ammo. So, after his wrapping-paper settled, he went to the sporting goods store to see what they had to complete his gear. The crazy thing is, he has all this fancy stuff, but he's never had a chance to fire the weapon! I tried to take him to a gun range, but that's not what he wanted to do on his birthday, so maybe one day he'll get to try it all out :)

Even the dog watched the gift opening intently--usually because he thinks he'll get a present too. Somebody is spoiled!

Our cardboard king quickly zoned in on the big box Buck's new gun case came in--and he turned it into a Star Wars speeder, and a colorful one at that!

Oh that cheesecake! Seriously amazing! We used my baker friend Tam's original (super secret) recipe. I'm so glad she shared the recipe with me, but we can only handle this once every few years--it's just that rich and decadent!

I guess I didn't post the lunch picture, which came before the cake picture, but I made Buck fried chicken and a pasta/veggie dish. Originally I was going to do cornbread, mac and cheese, and a macaroni salad he likes--but we had SOOO much food in the fridge and veggies that were going to expire. It still turned out to be tasty :)

He's just the cutest!

For dinner, we went out to eat at The Bonefish Grill. I was hoping for some Mahi, but it wasn't on the specials list, so I had Norwegian Cedar Plank Salmon instead--also very yummy. Buck had a sushi bowl, type thing. We were so full from all the other food earlier in the day, that we could hardly finish our meal. The waitress asked if we would like to order dessert and I briefly described the massive cheesecake we'd celebrated Buck's birthday with earlier in the day--she interpreted this as: time to celebrate! She brought two chocolate-covered cherries to the table with a candle standing in a mountain of fresh whipped cream.

After all that, we need a walk! So we popped into the mall and discovered a church-related outreach that we forgot was happening. We stopped in and visited with the volunteers and even got free t-shirts :)

Next we went to the theater. Our movie selection was not our jam, but we kept hoping it would get better (never did) and we left kicking ourselves for not bailing in the first few minutes.




When we arrived home to a happy houseful of children who spent a fun evening with their Grandma and Auntie, we had to snap a couple of end-of-birthday-day pictures :) Happy birthday to you . . .!! :)