Each Sunday morning a good group of folks from church service meet at Gloria Jean's Coffee Cafe in West End. Occasionally Daniel and I join this group for a chat. For his birthday, we ordered Daniel a coffee and a huge white chocolate raspberry muffin. Normally I do not order anything because coffee is disgusting. (ha! It's my blog so I get to say whatever I want!) This time, I chose to drink a small chai tea. Mostly I visited with my great friend, Carolyn. We've both been busy lately and haven't had a chance to connect, and it was wonderful to sit there listening to her. She just went through the first Landmark Forum course and was telling me what she got out of it. I've taken the first, advanced and Outreach and Community courses from Landmark when we lived in San Diego. They have their own language, so I think it was fun for Carolyn to just speak and have someone understand phrases like, "strong suit" and "racket stories" without having to explain what they mean.
After visiting for nearly two hours, we said goodbye and walked to Coles for dinner ingredients. Daniel wanted home made pizzas so we walked through the aisles looking for food inspiration. We also purchased an orange poppy seed cake mix and cookies and cream ice cream for dessert. The plan was to make dinner and possibly watch a film with Sarah and Simon. The past few years, Daniel has enjoyed mellow birthdays; he didn't want to invite anyone else over. I always want to plan big, fun parties for him. Since he's not interested, I do it anyway, then keep all the information in my head and wait until November to do it for myself!
Yes, he's helping me bake his own birthday cake.
Baking makes me nervous.
Churchy got a birthday gift, too!
(I think Bruno has eaten this ball, though.)
Dinner was fantastic and Simon really wanted to watch the Biggest Loser so we all gorged on pizza while we watched overweight people sweating and crying. Oh, it's one of my favourite pastimes. My folks and us used to watch this show in the states while eating ice cream. It might sound horrible, but Sarah gets it!
We made three pizzas.
Simon helped put some meat on this one.
Idea taken from Pizza Research Institute in Eugene!
Pesto (which I made from our garden basil), pear and potato pizza!
Mmmm, good!
Daniel's favourite candy is Reeses Pieces.
I had my folks send some over so I could decorate his cake.
There would be heaps more, however, I thought peanut butter with orange didn't sound fantastic.
He's blowing out votives and tea lights, because that's what we had!
When he saw the candy he asked, "Are those what I think they are?" I asked him what he thought they were and he'd forgotten the name! "Peanut butter!" Close enough! We reminded Sarah and Simon of the film, E.T. and they remembered Elliot enticing the alien with these pieces of peanut butter. Daniel was very surprised and happy!
A while later, our bellies full of cake and ice cream, Daniel chose to play Simon's "Cheating English" card game. This is what me and Sarah call it. (Simon, as you can imagine, is a huge fan of this name.) We listened to music while we played and did some singing while I racked up the points on the scoreboard. It was the first time I'd done well playing Simon's game and I won by one hundred points! I dedicated my win to the birthday boy and we all went to sleep that night quite content.
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