Jen's big day...

Happy Birthday Jen!

This past weekend was Jen's birthday! She made her decision a few weeks ago that this would be a day of rest...and so it was. It started with her sleeping in (as best she could while in a house with the tazmanian devil...a.k.a., Kade) and then we dined on her favorite breakfast ... Rob's secret breakfast burritos. Then it was time for the gifts! Jen and Kade started, as always, by going through the cards. As you can see from the first picture on the left...Payton couldn't wait for them --> see hand in lower left of picture ;-) The it was on to the main event...opening the big gifts. As you can see from the first picture on the right, Jen did not have to do much to get her gifts open! Her big gift from the kiddos and moi was a new Epson photo printer. So far we have only printed out a few pictures but the quality looks fantastic compared to our old inkjet printer.

After the gifts were opened we horsed around for a little while until Jen had to leave us - seeing as she was heading off to the spa for a 90 minute massage. During this playtime, Kade thought it would be especially funny if he took daddio's glasses off and ran around screaming like an out of control wild-man. We managed to snap some pics of both him and Payton with the glasses on (Kade decided Payton should wear them too). If you look really closely at the picture of Kade wearing my glasses - you will notice the song playing on our mediaPC (above Kade's head)...very appropriate indeed.

While Jen was at her "wonderful message", it was time for Rob to start working on Jen's birthday cake. This cake was a time consumer, seeing as it is 100% from scratch. It is a double layer chocolate cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese frosting and strawberries/ chocolate shavings on top. I named it "triple sin". It was really good...especially with the fresh strawberries on top!

Later in the evening the Zups came over to celebrate. The kiddos all had a great time staying up way too late as you can see from the photos! For Jen's dinner, I made her Chicken Cordon Blue with wild rice saute (wild rice pilaf with mushrooms, chicken stalk, onions and garlic). Ellen brought over some salad and then we all had our fill of Sin for desert. Overall, I think Jen had a great day!

(Seeing as how I am a man and I have not developed that ability to read my spouse's mind yet - I am not 100% sure.)

And then we went and ruined it all by spending the entire next day getting our house ready to sell....I am still feeling the pain today from that one.