Happy Birthday Matt

We had a great time celebrating Matt's birthday this last weekend. His birthday is often overshadowed because we're usually out of town or traveling on his birthday. In fact, this was the first time in FIVE years that we were actually at home on his birthday.

5 years ago we were at Steve and Laura's wedding.

4 years ago we were in Miami on our honeymoon.

3 years ago we were traveling home from visiting Jeremy and Anna in Iowa.

2 years ago we were on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean.
And last year we spent the day on an airplane traveling to New York.

Matt was excited to actually be home on his birthday, and I tried to make it an extra special birthday for him. He got one of his presents early. The day after we got home from Disney World, he went out to the shed to get the lawn mower so he could mow the lawn and found this in the shed:
He was ecstatic to have a new mower since our old one was a hand me down from my parents and not even self-propelled. He walked in after mowing the yard and said his new mower was "amazing." Thanks Mom and Barry. Maybe the yard will get mowed more often now.

When we got home from work on Friday he opened some more gifts. My parents also got him a new Settler's expansion pack along with the mower. Geez, he's really spoiled. I surprised him by getting him Rock Band. I think it was a good surprise. He played it all day on Monday.


Matt's parents came up to help us celebrate and we had a good weekend with them. We ate out a lot, visited the Jenks aquarium, played rock band and watched a movie together. We're glad they could come visit.

They left on Sunday afternoon, and Matt and I went on a date Sunday night to celebrate just the two of us. We saw Shrek Ever After which turned out to be pretty good. I laughed more than I thought I would, and it was definitely better than the last Shrek movie. We had planned to go out to dinner too on Sunday night, but we were getting tired of eating out. We don't eat out much, and I still don't think I've recovered from all the eating out at Disney World. I think I could go six months without even seeing fast food. So, instead of going to dinner after the movie, we stopped by Cherry Berry a new frozen yogurt place that is located just a couple of miles from our house. It was so good. We got burned a few weeks ago when we tried another frozen yogurt place, so my expectations were low, but it was really good and a fun experience. They had probably 10 different flavors of frozen yogurt and so many toppings. The best part was it was totally self serve, so we could get as many different kinds of yogurt as we wanted and as many toppings. I sense a great date night spot in our future this summer. We had a great night together.

We still weren't finished celebrating though. On Monday night, several of our friends came over for dinner to help Matt celebrate. He was very excited to show off his new toys. I was straightening the house on Monday and went to put the Rock Band box away, and he told me not to, that he wanted everyone to see it.
I bet you can guess that the first thing we did when everyone got there was play rock band.
After we rocked out, we had dinner. Matt grilled steaks for everyone, and I made roasted asparagus and potato casserole too. It was a yummy dinner with great company.
Of course it would be a sin if Matt celebrated a birthday without a cheesecake. Not only did Matt share his steaks for dinner, he also shared his cheesecake. He must really like our friends :).
I wasn't going to put candles on his cake but after his comment on my birthday that he had to buy two packages of candles to have enough, I found a place for every single one of those 27 candles :).
After dinner and dessert, we played a round of Settlers. We broke up into two tables and Matt's table played with his new expansion. I was at the other table so I don't know how fun it was, but Matt said he enjoyed it. I'm sure I'll get plenty of chances to learn how to play the new scenarios this summer.

I hope you had a great birthday Matt. I'm really glad you were born :).