September birthdays

Birthdays just aren't that exciting anymore.  But they still happen once a year, so we have to at least try to make them better than the average day.  That mostly involves extra food - just what we need for our slowing metabolism...  :)  For Alex's birthday, I made Mexican stuffed green peppers for dinner (his favorite).  For dessert, Alex wanted my new recipe - chocolate chip Twix cheesecake bars (I added M&M's as well).  We went to the beach after dinner.  What could be better than playing around in the dirt?

On my birthday, my only request was to go to I-Hop for breakfast so I could get the stuffed french toast.  We headed out the door at 6:50am so we could still get the boys to school in time (what, you think I was going to sleep in on my b-day?  No, I actually still got up around 6:00 and went for a jog before breakfast).  Later, I watched Winnie the Pooh with Owen while Weston was napping.  I was going to watch Nanny Diaries at the same time, but the computer wouldn't work and I didn't have the heart to pull Owen's movie out of the DVD player.  (By the way, Nanny Diaries was a pretty good movie.  Alex even liked it, so you know it has to be pretty decent.)  I didn't actually watch much of Owen's movie.  Instead, I resorted to checking facebook birthday wishes, which was nice to know that others had paid attention to the reminder and made the effort to comment.  ;)  Really, it was nice to read all the comments.  For dinner, we had sweet & sour chicken and egg rolls.  And I made my own dessert this year (no box cake this time*).  I tried out a new recipe - raspberry cream cheese pie.  It was pretty tasty!

* So, there's a little story behind the box cake.  I really don't mind them, but it's not my favorite.  I actually like pie better or cake with fruit on it.   Anyway, a funny little miscommunication between Alex and me happened sometime early on in our marriage.  For the first 3 or 4 years on my birthday, Alex made me a strawberry cake out of the box (the cake is pink and strawberry flavored).  Not wanting to seem ungrateful for his efforts, I didn't say anything.  But after the first few years of him making the strawberry box cake, I finally asked him why he kept making that.  He thought it was my favorite.  I'm not sure where he got that idea, but I probably did say that I liked strawberry cake, meaning that I like cake WITH REAL STRAWBERRIES on top.  We had a good laugh when we discovered that little miscommunication.  I don't think I've had a strawberry box cake since then.