Happy Birthday D!

Having a birthday right near Memorial Day means that often D hasn't had work or school on his birthday. Well, this year he only sort of had work. He spent yesterday and this morning chaperoning a group of rising 9th graders around GA Tech. It did mean that he got out of a day of post-planning yesterday (though the room cleaning and organizing still have to get done sometime this summer and sooner rather than later). He had a group of students sing happy birthday to him at breakfast this morning.

D got home early afternoon, so plenty of time to relax before I made him grill dinner. I fixed the rest of it (with my mom contributing her yummy potato salad and deviled eggs), but it is just too hard to get meat grilled and anything else cooked and have it all be even reasonably warm together. D had initially wanted tuna steaks for dinner, but when I went to the store this morning, they were all frozen solid. I bought them anyway, but also picked up some lamb chops on sale. D decided on lamb chops for his birthday dinner and we'll have tuna steaks in a few days once they've thawed all the way. We also had tasty spicy green beans (from Trader Joes). Those were great. I didn't think they were too spicy at all, but A did - so he joined M in having plain green beans. There was enough spicy marinade left over that I saved it and I'll add it to the grown up green beans the next time.

Here's D with his presents after dinner:


You can see that we are big believers in gift bags! I made several of the bags from my cloth stash.

The most unique gift D got was an Altoids tin that M made out of clay. It has a bottom and separate top and is labeled appropriately on top. We decided that the mints in the tin needed to be housed in a baggie though, as the clay is not completely dry yet.

Then we finished it all off with carrot cake. Yummy!