Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my Mom's birthday and we were lucky enough to enjoy it with her all day! She came down in time to join us for church and then hang out all afternoon before enjoying a delicious barbecue meal and a game of Pandemic (we lost). Brian came out in the afternoon and stayed through dinner. He's certainly not going to turn down a meal, especially when it consists of his favorite things: bread, potatoes, and steak. We had to clean the grill up a bit since we haven't fired it up since last fall but it was worth it...we've missed our Morton's Meat Candy! If you've never tried Morton's Marinated Steak from Costco you are totally missing out. It's absolutely, positively, fantastic. Grace wolfed it down and she never wolfs down anything resembling meat. It's that good.

Of course Mom's birthday cake wasn't too bad either. I found the recipe on my favorite food recipe site Allrecipes.com when I was searching for a chocolate cake recipe and it's definitely a keeper. The cake is called Too Much Chocolate Cake and received a 5 star rating with 1137 reviews. That's pretty darn good. One of the reviews suggested topping it with Satiny Chocolate Glaze which 393 reviewers also rate 5 stars. That stuff is chocolate heaven. And super easy!

Grace took the lead in singing Happy Birthday and then helped Grandma blow out her candle. Then we dug in to our chocolatey goodness (which is NOT too much chocolate by our standards). After cake we played some Pandemic and were two turns from winning when we lost because of too many disease outbreaks. It was quite dissapointing, but there's always next time.

Hope you have a great year this year Mom, you deserve it!

Ethan learning how to inhale rolls from his Uncle B

Grace helping Grandma blow out her candle

Brian wondering why we're not winning in Pandemic