Happy Birthday, Henry!!

So happy to celebrate the special birthday for Henry.  Our family tradition is to let the birthday person choose the meals of the day on their birthday each year.  Also, for special birthdays (1yr, 5yr, 10yr, 13yr, 16yr, 18yr, 21yr, and 42yr) the birthday person is allowed to have a BIG party with people from outside of our family are invited to join in our celebration.  We started this a few years ago to offset the many parties we were having each year...along with the expense!!!   So, funny...because this year we were hit wit ha huge whammy of special birthdays all at once...Henry turns 13...Sean turns 16...Zaira turns 1...Edward turns 10...Brendan turns 5....Amanda turns 21...and Michael turns 42....all within 18 months of each other!  I am the oddball with a special birthday the following year!  Such is life!

So...with all that said...today was Henry's day!  We woke up early to make him his favorite breakfast of hash browns  bacon, omelette and more bacon, along with coffee and grapefruit juice...and a little more bacon please!

We then sat down at the computer and he showed me the engraver tool he really wanted and we got it ordered.  Originally, we were going to buy a computer for him (well...pay half of the cost so he could afford it) but he decided to hold out for a little while.  (More on that later!)

I then had this great idea to have a group picture taken of all the boys!  This actually came up due to a deal I could not pass up on my favorite photo developing site (that had to be used TODAY!!!).

Then we got most of the prep work done for our evening meal.  Followed by a lunch of nachos!

We then raced out the door to get Amanda her lunch...only to find out she would be leaving work early. That was OK...it gave me a chance to see her at her new job...I even got a picture of her with her favorite dress in the shop!  And, once she left work, I convinced her to have her picture taken with Zaira and I...just us girls!

We had a plan to all join together this afternoon at the bowling alley by Henry's request.  He opted out of inviting a lot of other friends to join us...being the quiet hermit that he is.  If I had thought about it...I would have found a few of his friends to surprise him there.  We did have a few others join us for this fun and even with just our family we managed to make a big hoopla out of the event!

We even had Zaira bowling by the time we were through.  It was especially fun to watch her try to roll the big ball down the lane and actually knock some pins down.  Brendan was also a thrill as he was given a special aid to direct the ball...it was shaped like a dragon but the tail was like a slide used to roll the ball.  With this and the bumpers, he was sure to hit a few pins.  He even got some spares and a strike!

Amanda and her friend, Christina (our pseudo-daughter) joined us and they came bearing a gift as well!   They insisted that Henry open it right away...he was very pleased to find a t-shirt with Zelda character, as well as drawing supplies and 13 cents!

Then we had Sam and Cord join us!



We had balls dropping...gutter balls...and gutter bounces...laughs...dancing around the floor...more laughs and lots of pictures (see more on Facebook if you dare)!  We also decided to not play for high score so much as just for pure enjoyment.  To ensure we had no prideful winners or sore losers, we came up with a different way to determine the winner.  We had every one decide the score they THOUGHT they would make and whoever scored closest to that score won a prize!  We still had the bragging rights of high score and lowest score but most important we had fun.

We came home to grill Henry's birthday dinner....bratwurst...German potato salad...fresh garlic green beans...along with JJ's delicious cabbage.  We also made artichoke dip and spinach dip to tide us over until the dinner was ready.  We hardly had room for dessert!

Henry was also given a nice set of tackle from Uncle Sam.  I am thinking there is going to be another trip to the pond soon!

We all hope that Henry had a good day for his birthday...we sure enjoyed celebrating the day with him.  We also pray that he has many blessed days throughout this year and beyond.