THE Beard and its Subsequent Birthday Demise

I know that once again I have not been a super-blogger. However, you may have noticed over the past few months of scanty posts that my husband has been working very diligently on growing a beard. He started it back in the fall, around November maybe. By December and January it had gotten quite full. By March...well, it was a creature unto itself. Troy is a master beard-grower. We were all very impressed and I had fun trying to locate his lips in there when trying to give him a kiss.

Finally on March 3rd, Troy's birthday, he decided it was time to let it go. Since it was his birthday, we were having a couple of friends over for dinner and cake. One of the friends coming, Bob, happens to be a master of facial hair himself and is always sporting some type of mustache or lamb chops or some such thing. Troy decided it would be awesome to remove his beard one little section at a time in order to provide additional entertainment for the night.

We were all very entertained.

Phase One:

This is Bob. He approved of Phase One.

Phase Two:

And...Phase Three: 

And look! It's my husband! He was under there after all!

Beard or no beard, I sure do love this man. I was so happy to celebrate the launch of his 50th year on this earth. Sunday birthdays are hard, but I think we did well. We spent the afternoon watching one of Troy's favorite movies, October Skies. This is a truly great film. He's always wanted the kids to see it and I knew they would love it if we could get them to commit to sitting down and actually watching it, free from other screens or distractions. The incentive that this was all dad wanted for his birthday was enough to get all three of them to cheerfully agree and before they knew it, they were totally into the movie. I haven't watched it for years. It holds up. What a great movie that is. 

Also let it be known that it was on this date that we discovered a truly delicious recipe for chocolate cake. Emma has been following a baker on YouTube for years - she has a channel called Nerdy Nummies and bakes a lot of pop-culture themed food. We enjoy watching her put together her creations, and even purchased a couple of her cookbooks, but to be honest, I've never followed any of her recipes. Well, we tried her chocolate cake. And guess what. It is absolutely delicious. Great birthday cake. I can't figure out why I don't have a photo of the cake! It wasn't anything special, just baked in a 9x13 pan with no special decorations but it sure was good. 

We love Bob and his wife Tawnee and their cute little wild 18 month old kiddo. I wish everyone could have neighbors as wonderful to them as this family is to us. 

So yes, we had a really fun and memorable celebration for Troy. Troy, we adore you. Thank you for being the daddy of this house and home. You bless our lives.