Brett's Birthday Weekend

Last Friday was Brett's birthday. It called for a celebration weekend despite the torrential rain we received. And the party continues on.

Leading up to his birthday I emailed him various times with four options to choose from...little did he know, he was picking out his entire birthday weekend all from the choices. Here are the options given with his choice in bold:

1. Broadway, Sports, Culture, Fun

2. Sight, Sound, Touch, Taste

3. Old, New, Borrowed, Blue

4. Elementary School, High School, College, Beyond

New

We headed from work straight to dinner at a new restaurant we'd never been to, The Palm - a famous steakhouse here in NYC. He's a huge steak fan and since I'm not a huge red meat eater, he definitely doesn't get to enjoy it as much as he would like to. We sat in a table that President Bush Sr. used to sit at when he lived in NY and worked at the UN. He frequented the restaurant.

Chocolate Molten Cake with fresh berries and homemade whipped cream. It was presented to him with candle, birthday song and all. He was only slightly embarrassed as they turned the lights out and the other diners sang along :)

The rest of the plans for the night were postponed due to the rain, but we managed to take care of those on Saturday. So instead we went straight home to talk to family and open presents.

Here's the birthday boy listening to all of the nice messages he received. Thanks to all of you family and friends who sent birthday wishes his way!

Broadway/Beyond

And here he is anxiously waiting to open his gifts. He netted out with some of his favorite girl scout cookies (Samoas), a new shirt and tie from my family, and tickets to see Phantom of the Opera on the 22nd of this month (each of the school options was associated with a different play...beyond was Phantom which he was wanted to see for a long time). One more gift came on Saturday and we still need to pick up the package from his parents at the post office (with work though, we can only make it to the post office that is about 3/4 mile away on Saturdays).

In honor of his 24th birthday, we fittingly watched lots of 24 episodes. Friday night and all day Saturday it rained, so we took advantage of having an excuse to be lazy and watch 5 hours of TV (we never get to do that)! Two more episodes left to watch from the season...guess what we're doing tonight? :)

Sound

Once it stopped raining late Saturday night, we ventured over to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue (thank goodness it is open 24 hours) to get his other present - a new ipod! We spent some time there perusing the merchandise and playing the games on the imacs in the kids corner...man, those games for 6 and up games were challenging!

Sunday I made him his birthday dinner. He chose chicken roll-ups (a favorite that his mom made for him growing up), white rice, broccoli and salad. I've never had his mom's chicken roll ups, so I had nothing to compare them to, but I think they turned out well.

Brett spent most of Sunday reorganizing his itunes library, downloading fascinating finance podcasts, and just getting acquainted with his new friend.

We finished off his birthday weekend with a homemade cake. I had high hopes of finding a tasty new recipe, buying round cake pans and making him something fancy, but since we didn't really go out on Saturday until 9:30pm, it was too late to go to BBB to get the pans and I hadn't looked up a recipe. So we resorted to a Betty Crocker yellow cake recipe and his family's famous fudge frosting. I unsuccessfully attempted the frosting before Brett had to come in and salvage it. Again, I've never seen it made before, so I was making it blind. We've already made the request for his parents to teach us when they come out in May.

Once Brett took over with the frosting, the kitchen got ugly...he documented his mess as he was cleaning it up.

All in all, good birthday weekend! I sure do love my birthday boy!