Another Year Better

Yep...Jeff celebrated another birthday yesterday!  He is still jet lagged pretty badly and had to leave for Georgia this morning for a couple of days, but we did manage to squeeze in a celebration.

Jeff got home from work around 4:30, and the kids were quick to haul out their specially-picked out gifts.  Of course, as we had been out of town all of the previous week, they were specially picked out on Sunday afternoon after church at Walmart!

Elijah found Daddy a cool green shirt...

...and Charlotte picked out a couple of accessories for his bike, a water bottle holder and a lock.

After gifts, we headed into Peoria to meet some friends, the Pughs, for supper at the Kobe Steakhouse of Japan.  The Pughs were in our small group before we moved to France, and Saundi shares a birthday with Jeff!  So she asked yesterday at church if we wanted to meet for supper somewhere to celebrate.  As a Japanese steakhouse is a special-occasion sort of place, we settled on there.

Eating at Kobe was a hoot.  The eight of us sat around our own personal grill while the chef whipped up our food, complete with broccoli tossed into mouths, sake squirted all around, and an egg flipped up into his tall hat.  Of course, there were the requisite flames shooting four feet into the air, which terrified Charlotte and Ryann.  Here they are crouched against the wall, as if the flames were going to shoot out and engulf them!

Elijah was completely delighted by the whole show.  "You are so cool!" he proclaimed to our chef.

After supper, we came home and had a mint cream pie that I had purchased from one of the kids' tae kwon do classmates.  His school was having a fundraiser, and, when I bought them, I still thought I would be celebrating Thanksgiving at home.  I had somehow forgotten candles in the midst of this past week's madness, but we sang "Happy Birthday" and dug in anyway!

All in all, not a bad birthday celebration!

This morning, Jeff flew to Georgia for a two-night business trip.  He snapped this photo of my tummy before he left.  I always try to include a couple of these in my kids' baby books, but this was the first one we've managed to take of this new little one!  We're halfway there!

 

Have a good one.