Happy Birthday Kurt & Chris!!

We celebrated Kurt's 39th birthday today (Woohoo! That makes me 36!!  I like it!).  Well, we sort of celebrated it all weekend :)  Last night, he got to choose where we went for his birthday dinner.  He picked Buca di Beppo Italian restaurant, which was a new one for us.  We had never been there.  For those of you who've never been there before, it's family style.  We chose two different pasta dishes, plus a salad.  It was a fun experience!  The worst part of the night was when Kurt decided we should get wine.  Originally he ordered a carafe of White Zinfandel.  The waitress came back soon after ordering to tell us they didn't have Zinfandel in a carafe, that they only had a 1.5 liter bottle.  We said, 'No problem, that's fine!'  Next they show up with one of those big bottles of wine, a brand that I'm sure we've had in the past from the liquor store that probably didn't cost us more than $10.  Well, weren't we a bit shocked when the bill came and that bottle of wine was $45!!!!  I'm surprised Kurt didn't have a heart attack right then and there...LOL!!

Can you guess what's in this measuring bowl and what is was for???

If you guessed red beets, you were spot on :)  I have this delicious chocolate cake recipe from a friend from work and the recipe has pureed red beets in it!  Alyssa made cupcakes instead, with peanut butter icing (recipe also from my friend Jenn at work).

*Note Alyssa's new cupcake holder!  She's kind of obsessed with making cupcakes these days and was getting tired of having to use two of my Rubbermaid containers to put all 24 cupcakes in.  We went to Bed Bath and Beyond yesterday and found this nifty holder. (You can kinda see the lid in the background, it's actually collapsible, so if you only have one layer of cupcakes or a round cake that's not so high you can collapse the lid and it's not as big and bulky.)

She wrote out Happy Birthday Kurt & Chris on the cupcakes and we headed down to Fogelsville this afternoon to celebrate with Kurt's brother, Chris and family.  Tomorrow's Chris' birthday....lemme see....if Kurt's 39, that'll make Chris 36 tomorrow :)

Kieran and Alyssa hung out with the younger kids, while Chris, Fiona, Kurt and I went to Outback for a lovely dinner.  It was so much fun spending some time together with them.  I told Kieran we'll be back next Sunday to go out again.  Alyssa said, 'Nope, next time Kieran and I get to go out....and you guys have to stay home...LOL!!'

We came back to their house to sing Happy Birthday and enjoy cupcakes and ice cream.

I'm sure you can't see it in this picture, but I got candles that had flames the colors of the candles.  I was skeptical, but they actually were green, yellow, blue, purple and red!!

They were instructed that they had to only blow out their own candles!

Do they look 36 & 39?!?!?!?