Birthday Time x Two!

With everyone's busy and varied work schedules, we have determined that late evening Sunday is our family celebrations window :) Brennen was delayed at work by some customer thievery (very inconsiderate when he had a party to attend), but I got his order ahead of time, so it worked out that he sat down right as his food was being delivered. Boom. 

I'm not sure how many baskets of hot, cinnamon buttery rolls the waiter brought to our table--but it was significant :) Interestingly, nearly half of us ordered the same thing for dinner (bacon cheeseburgers), which made food prep easier for the kitchen, I'm sure. 

Gabby said we were not to let the staff know that a birthday, namely hers, was being celebrated (because they make you sit on a barrel like a bull rider while they sing you happy birthday and yip and hoot and yeehaw--not her jam :) I thought we should just fast forward a week and tell them it was Buck's birthday, but despite his being a Broncos fan, Buck did not want to be a bronco-buster birthday boy either. (Also, as you may have gathered, it is really hard to find a restaurant that stays open past 8 PM on a Sunday!) But the food was good, and we had fun celebrating Gabby :)

After dinner we all moseyed back to the house to open gifts, because Graysen thought that was the best plan :) Gabby was very excited to discover a record player from her brothers and laughed really hard when her brother-in-law-to-be got her a gift card . . . to the store where she works, lol!

Gabby's birthday song contained many unusual notes and much creative license when it came to the traditional tune. My heavily-sprinkled birthday cake and sparking, hard-to-blow out candle confection resulted in a blast of sprinkles scattering across the counter and on to the floor. The video is basically just me laughing, so I'll post photos for this one . . . but the mini choir got applause from Gabby, so I think the birthday girl approved of their efforts :)

Buck and the boys were out of town on Buck's birthday, so we reserved the next Sunday evening for his celebration. I forgot to write the ingredients for the ice cream bar cake on my shopping list (although I did take a picture of the recipe with my phone) and so forgot to purchase said items when I bought all of the other food for the birthday party. Caelan and Noah graciously added this task onto their to-do list that day, and then Caelan had fun building the quickly-melting treat. We stashed it in the freezer until much later (almost 9 PM?) and Graysen helped me get the fried chicken in the pan. 

A day or so earlier, I asked the meat counter guy for five bone-in breasts split in half. He took quite a long time behind the scenes and when he returned, he presented me with a huge taped-up egg box that had carrying handles built-in! I thought, "What did I just buy?!" but, sure enough, it was exactly what I'd ordered. However, it was way more chicken than I could fit in my usual pan, so I air fried half of the meat simultaneously, and it worked out great! It has been soooo long since I made fried chicken, the whole family was a little surprised to see it back on the menu, ha! Buck enjoyed a few of his favorite summer salads, too.

After opening lots of great gifts from the kids (like a prepper fishing pole, a meat smasher, a Star Wars mug where the light sabers react with the coffee temperature, and I think Gabby got him a gun!), talk turned to retail stories of . . . well . . . poop. The kids were laughing so hard, they could barely sing Buck his song! Clearly retail and events planning are surprisingly unsanitary career choices, but the retelling is highly amusing. Just be glad no one shared actual event security footage for the blog . . . yeeesh!! :)