Birthday business!

Dustin's 30th birthday, aka the first anniversary of his 29th birthday was last Friday.  I didn't mention my plans before because I tried to keep it all on the down low.  But in the end all of my plans unfolded before the event, so I should have just come out and talked about it. 

Friday night I arranged for some friends to watch Austin so Dustin and I could go on a romantic dinner date.  The guy in the couple works with Dustin and apparently did not realize it was a surprise and mentioned to Dustin at work that Monday that they would be happy to watch Austin on Friday night.  When he realized it was supposed to be a surprise he and Dustin decided to just pretend like he did not know.  Thursday night I told Dustin I was concerned because I saw that family pick up their kids early from our daycare, so I was worried that they were sick and wanted his opinion about if we should cancel.  He revealed that Pat spilled the beans at work.  They ended up being well so we were able to go on our date.

We went to a restaurant that is about 30 miles from our house at the east entrance of Zion National Park called The Buffalo Grill.  I really wanted to try their specialty, buffalo steaks, but since it was the first Friday of Lent I went with their fish special.  It was pretty good, a broiled sole fillet with white asparagus and pine nut medley on the side with balsamic glaze.  Dustin had a Kobe beef steak, which looked incredible by the way.  It was a quaint place that was rustic, but yet romantic with a fire place.  We were the only ones there when we arrived so had the undivided attention of the waiter. 

Saturday I planned a surprise BBQ open house for Dustin's co-workers.  I kind of planned it last minute since I had to work out the babysitting details from the night before, and the only way I had to let people know was through Facebook.  I have nine of Dustin's co-workers, or their spouses on there, and was hoping they would spread the word to everyone else.  So I knew there would probably be limited turn out since it was short notice, but I failed to think through that most of the people I have in my friend list are women.  Of course most of them usually come with husbands, but two of the guys were on travel for work, one was suffering from gout, and another family was all sick.  Two wives of co-workers come over and each brought their two kids.  Austin had a great time with four of his daycare buddies to play with.  Then a guy showed up that heard through the grapevine, thank goodness!  Two other single ladies showed up so it was a good turn out, just very female oriented.  I think everyone had fun, the ladies mostly hung out in the house with the kids and the boys headed to the back porch to drink beer.

Kids say the funniest things, two things stood out with this group:

• S who is a  6 year old boy "Wow, you guys have a lot of tractors, you need to come to my seventh birthday!"
• R who is a 4 year old boy says in response to his Mom wanting to leave "But we haven't done the most important part yet"  Mom says "what is that?", R says "the cupcakes!"  I explain to him that we aren't having cake or cupcakes, R says "but why?"  I explain to him that some times adults don't want to do the whole birthday cake and candles thing because they don't want to think about how old they are getting.  He looks at me like I am from a foreign planet!  That or he is so utterly upset about not getting a cupcake even though he scarfed down two peanut butter cookies already.

And the birthday celebrations are not over since I ordered Dustin's gift through Amazon, and it has STILL NOT BEEN DELIVERED.  I really think they have figured out some way to stall their products to encourage people into paying extra for expedited shipping.  I used to order stuff from them and it would get here way faster than their estimated delivery date, but the last two things I ordered have taken forever.  Today was the latest expected day that it would be delivered, but no sign of it.  On the tracking log the last entry had it leaving Phoenix, AZ last Thursday.  So it takes us about 6 hours to drive to the heart of Phoenix in traffic, so I'm having a hard time figuring out how it still has not gotten delivered here four days later.  Are they running Pony Express or what?

Oh well, everything else turned out well and we had a great weekend so I guess I should not complain.