Happy Birthday to Steve!

Steve had his birthday yesterday and the family celebrated with him. Evan started the day by getting up early to have breakfast and a little reading time with Dad. Unfortunately, Steve then had to go to work. The boys and I wrapped presents and cooked until Steve got home. Okay, we didn't spend all of our time doing that, but it did kind of feel like it. I made a new marinara sauce recipe for dinner, thanks to Kerri for sharing the recipe and Melody for letting me try some on pizza at her house. I also made my first traditional apple pie. Steve loves apple pie apparently, but I had never made him one. So, for his birthday I took the plunge. I told him he might get another one on another birthday. It wasn't really that bad, but I did feel like I had been in the kitchen all afternoon. I like the kitchen, but not quite that much.

Steve had to work later than he had originally planned, so the boys had to keep looking at the apple pie and asking if they cold have some. When I told them they could after Daddy got home, they whined, "but I don't want to wait for Daddy!" Happy Birthday, Daddy! But they did wait - mostly. Joel did make one little poke into the top pie crust, for which he was sent to time-out. When he finally got some pie, he decided that he didn't really like it anyway. But Steve did, so that made the afternoon worthwhile.

He also had a small surprise party at a friend's house on Sunday evening. I had been planning it for a while, and it had been causing a little stress. He wanted to know why I was having to take the boys shopping so much, why I had to do stuff all day Saturday (some was girl-time and some was party-time), why we weren't going to our friends' house earlier in the day, and why we were taking so many tortillas. I kept thinking "AAARRRGGGHHHH!" However, I was able to come up with somewhat reasonable excuses, some thought out in advance and some on my feet. He had begun to expect some celebration with the friends we were going to visit, but he was not expecting the magnitude of the party. In fact, he even helped make some tortillas for the fajitas we ate at the party. All-in-all it was a lot of fun! We had fun hanging out with our friends, some we hadn't seen in a long time, and the kids had fun playing together. We even got to hang out in the pool while the food was cooking.

So, I think that Steve enjoyed his birthday, and the boys and I had fun getting ready for it, too. It is fun to see the boys beginning to think about others and how to do nice things for them. (Keep in mind the waiting for apple pie story when I say "beginning".)