Let The Birthday Partying Begin!

This past Saturday, I had my first official 34th birthday celebration. Jackie’s family invited me over for dinner and we had a delicious meal prepared by her mom, Jan. Jackie and her brother, Kenny gave Jan a hard time about cooking such a nice meal, saying that she didn’t even cook them birthday meals as nice as mine, but I find that hard to believe. I think they just enjoy giving her a hard time.

Jan cooked filet mignon with a gravy/sauce that is one of my favorites, fruit compote, twice baked pototoes, salad, rolls and asparagus using a new recipe. The asparagus was (I think) puff pastry with the asparagus on top along with cheese. It was very good. Hopefully she will share the recipe with me because I would like to make it some time. It was a nice new twist on asparagus and I think everyone enjoyed it. For dessert we had chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese icing. It was three layers and in between each layer was a raspberry, confectioner’s sugar mixture. The cake also had one and a half cups of brewed coffee in it and it was delicious. It was one of the best cakes I’ve ever had and I really love cake!

After dinner, we answered questions from a set of dinner conversation cards. This is a tradition at the Bell home and we do it every time I am there. The questions cover a broad range of topics from what invitation would you most like to receive to who is your favorite fictional character. These cards are a lot of fun and it is always interesting to see what each person’s response will be. The questions also lead to other conversation, which I guess is the whole point. After we read and answered a few questions, I received birthday cards from everyone and Tim and Jan gave me a gift of movie passes and a pair of earrings. All of which will be put to good use. Once the opening of the presents and cards was complete, we had our cake and then we played Scrabble and a new game called Qwirkle. Kenny won Scrabble and Jackie won Qwirkle. One thing about this family is that they love to play games and are all very competitive. It was a lot of fun. If you’ve never heard of Qwirkle, you should look it up. It was a fun game for two to four players.

We had a great night full of laughter, conversation, game playing and of course eating which I think is the favorite of all of us! Thanks so much to Jan for cooking a wonderful meal and for Tim and Jan for having us over! It was a great way to kick off the “birthday week”!

Ashlyn was flying solo since Troy was at his first sleepover 

Earrings and a movie gift card - can't beat that!

Friends for a long time

Jan and Ashlyn putting candles on the birthday cake

We let children play with fire at my birthday parties!

Blowing out the candles. Kenny looks like he's trying not to get hit by spit.

A slice of cake

Tim, Ashlyn, Jackie, Me and Kenny (nice pants!)

Tim, Me and Jan