It seems like Troy's favorite way to celebrate his early-spring birthday is to have a mellow day, hopefully with some time off of work, to have dinner with his family and maybe enjoy a little slice of cake. He is not a fanfare kind of guy. This is great. Sometimes I have a desire to create fanfare but it's really not Troy's favorite. So I resisted that temptation and instead did my best to plan some really yummy, simple and healthy meals plus one slightly wicked cake.
The day started out very early - it was a Wednesday, which for us meant that the kids didn't have to get up for school. During this crazy covid year their Wednesdays have no live teaching. It's what we have learned to call "asynchronous learning." It's nice to have a little bit of a quieter day during the week and I hated to wake up the kids as early. So instead I got up early and made Troy one of our favorite breakfasts of omelets with sautéed vegetables, heavy on the mushrooms, light on the cheese. Add avocado on top and it's basically food fit for the gods. It was fun to treat him to that in the morning. Plus I found some funny little balloons to decorate the table for breakfast.
Troy went off to work, I spent some time making food for some friends who had a family funeral that day, then the kids started waking up and the day began to roll on as normal. Emma and Romney thought it was really fun that Troy was turning 51 and so we spent some time with my Silhouette paper-cutting machine creating a little sign stating, "NOW ENTERING AREA 51" plus an alien head. It made a funny topper to our cake, which Emma made. Double chocolate raspberry. Troy did get himself away from work, not quite as early as he was hoping but still early enough to enjoy the afternoon at home, even going for a nice long walk with Romney. He had wanted to go on a mountain bike ride but decided the trails were still too wet and muddy. A walk was just perfect. While they were out walking I made a Vietnamese Salad with rice noodles and veggies and egg rolls and grilled pork. I'm slowly refining that recipe and I think I've just about got it. It was super good.
The best part for me was Troy's gift. I had asked him several times what he wanted for his birthday, and he never could really think of something birthday-worthy that he wanted. Luckily I had had inspiration strike a few weeks earlier. He loves this blog. I feel a little bad about it - I mean, years ago I was blogging constantly and trying to tell every funny little story about the kids and their wackiness. But now that they are teenagers it's a little less funny and a little more embarrassing for them so it's not quite as interesting as it used to be. But still, I think it's been a really good family record for us. Years and years ago for Christmas Peter and Sheri gave us a book of our first year of the blog, and a couple years after that I gave the second year to Troy. But since then the company I used has stopped printing blogs and I just didn't know where to go. But I decided to try again and I found another company to do it. It was actually great to have a surprise for Troy that made him happy. We ended up sitting around as a family reading over it - it was from 2009, the year that Emma was born and right in the height of Romney's most notorious behavior. We laughed and laughed together as we read it - and really, I think that's the kind of thing that makes for the best birthday of all, to be together, to be laughing. What a great night. I included at the bottom a photo of an old facebook post about Romney from not long after that same time, just as an example of what great material she had going at the time.
Happy Birthday to my Troy. He's my favorite.
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