Party Hearty or is it Hardy? Either Way, We Partied Hard!

On Tuesday, we celebrated not only Mardi Gras, but also the aniversaries of the birth of myself and John-Paul.

Most people call them bithdays.

I am not most people.

I turned 41 and JP turned 17and Phil placed the candles (on the beautiful and delicious cake he made!) oh so strategically :)

Then everybody sang, and we counted down to blow out the candles together, when little Brendan stinker swooped in and blew them out first!

We laughed and laughed!

Brendan also posed for our birthday photo as well.  Aaahh, todllers are so cute!

Honestly, I felt as if we had been celebrating our birthdays for a week!  We were on a break from school the week before, and knowing that Lent was coming on the day after our birthday...we were sort of in Fat Tuesday mode for all the days that ended in Y.

On Sunday, Phil made my favorite meal of chicken cordon bleu, and then on our actual day, JP picked pasta and meatballs.  JP wanted the mocha cake with coffee frosting, and I wanted creme brulee, so we had the creme brulee over the weekend as well.  I told ya, we pigged out!

My favorite song right now is "What a Man Gotta Do" by the Jonas Brothers, and when I saw this video of that song to one of my favorite old tv shows, Boy Meets World, I asked my boys to please recreate the dance as a birthday gift to me.  

They did!!!!!  It was amazingly awesome, but I promised not to videotape it so as not to embarrass them.  Just trust me, it was a true gift to their momma who loves choreographed dances.  They also each made me such wonderful cards, that I quickly tucked away into my memory box to cry over in the future.

We moved onto the opening presents portion of the evening, and had so many helpers!  Family birthday parties are so fun for the little ones, it's adorable.  

JP received some Adidas sneakers, ear buds, a car mount for his phone, a Visa Gift card, some cold hard cash, the 3rd installment in a series he's reading, and another 3rd installment of another series he's reading (the kid has always loved to read), as well as a tooth whitening kit (he asks for them!) and we are bringing him to see Trey Kennedy perform in Pittsburgh when we go college visiting in April.  Whew!  That's a lot - thank you to his generous grandparents on both sides and his godmother!

Then it was my turn!

The helpers were ready...

I had been hinting (and hinting, and hinting) to Phil to get me Danielle Bean's new book, and he came through!  He also gave me her Manual for Women.

I got the Knives Out movie as well, and gift cards to a few of my favorite stores... Loft, Marshalls, Ulta, the nail salon, and a Visa gift card.  Thanks to my generous husband, mom and mom-in-law!

Then Phil told us all to go into the family room...where he totally suprised me with DVDs of our home movies that had been sitting on tapes from our ancient video camera.  We popped the first one in, and watched JP scoot on his bum (he never crawled) and a Halloween party where my mom dressed up as a Red Hat lady and my Dad dressed up as a Harley Davidson motorcycle guy.  We were cracking up at his outfit, but even more so because he had bought a women's shirt by accident, and it was so tight on him!  Plus, he had a fake tatoo on his arm that read "I Love Mags" (my mom is Maggie, and dying laughing below).  So fun to walk down memory lane!

What a wonderful birthday, full of memories, with gifts of memories.  Maybe this getting older thing ain't so bad after all.