The Big Birthday Bash

On Friday night, we threw Dennis his big 40th birthday party.  I love him so much and wanted do something special for him.  I did a Tuscan theme for the evening because we have wonderful memories of our trip to Italy together.

To see more about the food and decorations, you can go to my other blog to see my post about it.

We had so many wonderful friends and family come and join us for the celebration.  Dennis was touched, and told everyone of his appreciation and love for them.

We had delicious panini bar.  The choices overwhelmed some folks, but I don't think anyone made a bad sandwich.  We had three panini grills going, and it blew a fuse!  But that is why we invited Cody Dean, our favorite electrician.  Thanks for getting the lights back on, Cody!

Our good friends, the Jorgansens, came all the way down from Riverside for the party.  It was so great to visit with them again!  We really miss those fine people!

A few of the female revelers enjoying themselves.

A party isn't a party without the Risenmays!

It was go fun to visit with the Heads again.

We love these folks!

D.J. and Doug manning the panini grills, having a bit too much fun with a bottle of olive oil.  Extra virgin!  Yeah, baby!

During the festivities, I snuck into the kitchen to make dessert.

Haven't you ever had spaghetti for dessert?  It was actually cupcakes!

Turns out 40 candles was way too many to get lit with a breeze blowing, even with two lighters going!  We gave up.  He just blew out the lighter instead.

A lot of smiles and laughter.

Me and my sis-tas!    Mindy had flown down from Oregon and it was so fun to have her around!  She came a few hours early to help me in the kitchen, and I was SO grateful!  I love my sisters, and love when they are around!

More laughing - a good sign for a hostess.  But those two gals, Denice and Alysa, are always laughing, aren't they?

What a fun night!  We had about 40 guests!

Dennis' buddy Jeff and his gorgeous wife Shea were there, of course.

Our "adopted" grandma, Bev, really enjoyed herself!  And Mom was having a high time as well.

It was an absolutely beautiful evening, as far as the weather goes.  I was so happy about that.  You take your chances having an outdoor party this time of year.  We have misters, but I didn't think they'd be good for the paper lanterns, so I was glad we didn't have to use them.

Of course there would be no 40th birthday - no Dennis for that matter - with out his Mom!  We are so glad she was able to get off work to be here!  She is the sweetest woman anywhere!  We love you, Mom!

Then, after all the guests left, and Dennis went to go pick up the kids, a familiar car drives up.

It was our good friends, the Muchenjes!  They had driven all the way in from Riverside, and were super late because she had just flown in and he had to pick her up at Ontario Airport, there were delays, etc.  But they just had to come anyway, to celebrate Dennis' birthday with us.  We are so glad they did!  So we pulled out the food again, and had another mini-party with these guys.  

It was better, because the boys could visit with them too!  And the hostess got to actually sit and visit, something I didn't have a lot of time for during the party.  We partied hard until after 1 a.m.!

The Muchenje's and the boys watched Dennis open his presents.  Lots of good stuff like reading glasses, denture cream, 

and these very hip racquet balls from Roxanne and Chris with instructions for how to use them on the end of his walker.  What a kick!

Thanks everyone for coming!

Happy Birthday Dennis!  You are worth all the effort!

Wax On, Wax Off

Remember how in "the Karate Kid" Mr. Miyagi made  Daniel-san work in his yard as "training?"  Well, on Memorial day we drove to Riverside to do a little "wax on, wax off" action ourselves in the amazing yard of our old martial arts instructor, Mr. Muchenje.  (His wife, and my dear friend and instructor was out of state visiting her family.  I was sorry I missed her.)

He has a huge piece of property, with an entire huge hidden tropical garden down in a ravine.  A great place for the boys to run and play!

The boys had so much fun roaming the hills and playing in this man-made tropical paradise.  Mr. Muchenje gave us a grand tour of all of the projects he is working on.  He has been busy since he moved away from us last year.

Perhaps the boys had the most fun with the Bamboo.  Mr. Muchenje has a huge bamboo grove that he planted.  It has really taken off.  The boys love to play and hide in the bamboo grove, and love to play with the bamboo poles that are everywhere.

Caleb is practicing his stick fighting skills.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Speaking of bamboo, "Bamboo" is also the name of Mr. Muchenje's new adorable puppy.

I found Luke just hanging out in an irrigation ditch.  See?  This place was fun for everyone!

Well, one thing wasn't very fun.  I found out for the first time what brushing along stinging nettle feels like!  Ouch!  It stings really, really bad.  NOT fun.  And it kept stinging all day long.  Of course after my experience I gathered the whole family around to educate them about what stinging nettle looks like, so they could all avoid it.  I wish I had known.  Yikes!!!

Then, after a bit of visiting and catching up, we got to work.

Derek-san and Dylan-san helped me assemble an entire 7 piece patio furniture set while Alex-san, Nathan-san, and Caleb-san raked and cleared the land in the fire break around his property.  The boys also cleaned the pool - a job they volunteered so they could swim in it later.  We all worked really hard.  Wax on, wax off.

The boys fished a huge scorpion out of the bottom of the pool when they were cleaning it - one of the highlights of the day.  I was instructed to take a picture and post it.

While we were waxing on and off, Dennis-san went to the grocery store, and came back and fixed us up a big barbecue lunch.  It was SO yummy!

When the working and eating was done, it was time to play.  We took Mr. Muchenje on one of our favorite family activities - Geocaching!  What a beautiful place Riverside is!  We had so much fun looking around pretty orange groves and natural giant sega palm groves (avoiding the giant stinging nettle also growing there), and hoofing it down beautiful, palm-tree-lined Victoria Avenue.  We found 3 caches!  What a fun adventure.  I think we got our sensai hooked.

Then, he shared one of his favorite activities with us - archery!  His targets were at least a hundred yards away.  He was good!  I had a hard time just pulling the string back.  We had fun trying to hit the target.  I came close, (within 10 yards!), but Dennis hit it.  My hero!  

Look at Dylan's face!  He was as serious about archery as he is about everything.

Then Mr. Muchenje made us a wonderful meal of fish tacos!  He is quite a cook, using veggies straight out of his vegetable garden.  The presentation was beautiful, and tasted even better than it looked.  Wow!

He set Dennis and I out on the patio to eat - a romantic dinner in the moon light - while he kept the boys inside the house and did a little "training" with them.

Now that is just the kind of training my boys need!  Put them in their place, Mr. Muchenje.

(They LOVED it - they line up for this stuff!)

 

Then Dennis and Mr. Muchenje played a little hot hands for old time's sake.  Mr. Muchenje was fast, but yes, my man was faster and cleaned his clock!  All that waxing on and off must have really paid off!   Maybe Dennis should have a black belt in hot hands.

What a fun day we had!  

Cupcake Conundrum

So last week, Dennis made a trip to Costco, and when I got home this is what was sitting on the counter: 

It was a box of 20 super-jumbo size cupcakes with 3 inch thick frosting.

Do you know what my first thoughts were?  Well, it wasn't "Oh goodie, Cupcakes!", as Dennis had expected.

I had lots of thoughts at the same time, actually:

1. Why on earth would he buy those?  It isn't anybody's birthday!

2. Those are like 15 weight watchers points each!

3. Our children DO NOT need this!

4. HE does NOT need this!

5. I definitely do NOT need this.

6.  How am I going to keep the kids out of this?

7. How am I going to keep the hubby out of this?

8.  How am I going to keep myself out of this?

9.  I do NOT need this kind of temptation!

10.  There will be a mess.

10 1/2 . A very big mess!

And I'll take a guess as to what HE was thinking when he bought them:

1. Oooooh, cupcakes.  Me like cupcakes!

So I let him have it.  How dare he bring those cupcakes into this house, are you trying to sabotage us, etc.  After the initial shock of having to reconcile the idea that anyone wouldn't be absolutely excited about jumbo cupcakes with 3 inch thick frosting, he thought fast on his feet, and said they were for the office.

"Fine, take them to you office."  End of discussion.  Dennis had narrowly avoided a wife meltdown.  Whew.

But by morning, the plastic was open and one cupcake was missing.  Then came Mom's whole "OK, gentlemen, who took the cupcake?" game.  Dennis fessed up.  

"You are taking 20 cupcakes to your office, and only 4 people work there.  Couldn't you have just waited 'til then?"  Guess not.   Well, when a soul needs a cupcake, he needs a cupcake (A truth I fully do appreciate!).

And you know how it is once something has been opened - the vultures descend.

An hour later, four more cupcakes had mysteriously vanished.

Dennis left for work... and left the cupcakes on the counter.

So I call up my DH and tell him to come get his cupcakes because he CANNOT leave them there to tempt me all day.  

He says "Why don't you just use some self-control?  I have self control."  To me.  HE said that to ME!

"Self control.  SELF CONTROL!  You had NO self control for 30 seconds when you spotted these cupcakes at Costco, and because of it, you expect me to have self control ALL DAY LONG  in this house just knowing those tasty morsels are sitting on the counter waiting to be eaten!  Come get those cupcakes, or I will throw them away."

He rushed home, and walked in to find a three year old covered in a substance looking pretty much like three inch Costco frosting, and a steaming wife.  Luke had, in an attempt to get to the cupcakes, accidentally dumped over the whole box onto the kitchen floor.  There was a jumble of cupcakes on the ground, and frosting everywhere.  

I've heard of upside-down cake, but upside-down cupcakes?

Remember, Madame Momma had predicted this mess!  She knew those cupcakes meant trouble.  Madame Momma always knows!

"Why didn't you just put them up?" Dennis accuses me.

"Up?" I ask, "Define 'Up'.  Where exactly is 'Up' where Lukie can't get to them?  He can get anything anywhere." 'UP', as a place to put thing away from the kids, ceased to exist long ago!

Meanwhile, Luke had managed to grab two, one chocolate, and one vanilla, and run under the refuge of the dining table to feast.  There was frosting ALL OVER the dining chairs and carpet.  Nice!

And Caleb, who hadn't yet gotten a cupcake, suffered severe disappointment from the whole cupcake incident.  

I had known this wouldn't end well, hadn't I?

"Just throw them away." said Dennis, defeated.

"Good!" I said, glad to finally get my way.

So I scooped them all up back into the box and carried the whole thing outside to the big trash can and dumped the whole mess of them...

...but not before loosing ALL self control and stuffing my face with some untouched portions of cake and frosting!  Holy cow, that was tasty!

And then I was sad that I had gotten my way and  they were gone.

Perfect Timing

So if any of you happened to notice that most of my family was on time to Church (and that isn't easy with the fun new gestapo-esque reverence policies that have been implemented in our stake - yay, 10 additional minutes to try to keep kids quiet!  I don't know about you, but it sure adds to my sabbath experience), yet I walked in after the sacrament with a shiny clean 3 year old, this is my excuse:

It was 10:40 and we were all dressed and ready to run out the door when Luke walks into where we were putting on the last tie and gelling back the last head of hair, holds up these two masterpieces of art and asks if we like his picture.  I have to admit, the pictures didn't catch my eye as quick as the blue paint on the freshly bathed body did.  Lovely!

Good-by sacrament.

So the family took off to get the deacons there on time, and I took a few pictures to document the reason for my tardiness before tossing the kid back into the freshly emptied tub.

The artist seems pretty pleased with his body of work.

Notice the freshly washed hair.

Then he tried to get away from me and climbed under the flower cart.

I eventually got the budding artist out from under the cart and into the tub, dressed and into the chapel as soon as the sacrament was over.

So that is my excuse - at least for this week.

Oh, and then after church, Luke tried and experiment to see what would happen if you dump an entire box of cereal down the slide.  I think he was pretty pleased with the results.

Yippee for three!