Happy Birthday, Caleb!!

Well, I'm a little bit behind!  Caleb had his 11th birthday on Monday!  Mondays are really busy days for us, as we are doing last-minute things for Rivendell on Tuesday, but we managed to squeeze in some celebrating.  Caleb wanted chicken salad on croissants for his birthday lunch.  I got the croissants on Sunday from Sams, but I didn't get the chicken salad made up.  I had to leave at 12:00 to take Micah to Bethesda for an allergy appointment, so I made up the dressing but Caleb had to cut up the chicken, celery and grapes for his own birthday lunch.  Good thing he likes cooking!

Micha's appointment took forever, but finally it was done, I rushed home, then rushed over to the McC's house to pick up Nathan from his Spanish III class, and then rushed back home to make his birthdya dinner.  Caleb really loves this sausage roll, which is sausage mixed with some other things in a puff pastry sheet shell.  The recipe calls for one puff pastry sheet and 1/2 pound of sausage.  We are now up to quadrupling the recipe, LOL--4 puff pastry sheets and 2 pounds of sausage.  Finally we had a bit left over!

After dinner we ate ice cream and opened presents.  Caleb got a short-sleeve underarmor-type shirt, which he's been wanting, as well as an Avengers t-shirt.  He also got the new VeggieTale movie, The League of Incredible Vegetables, which everyone has enjoyed. He also got a little Star Wars lego set.

Now you notice I didn't say anything about cake.  I knew a cake was going to be hard--I didn't have any time, and besides, I have gestational diabetes and can't eat any of it anyway!  But Sunday night I hosted the moms from our elementary co-op at our house for a spaghetti dinner.  This meant we spent all of Saturday and most of Sunday afternoon furiously cleaning the main floor of our house, which had somehow gotten incredibly cluttered, if you can imagine.  We did stuff we usually don't do for Rivendell, like clean off the hearth, and move piles of books from the floor and various tables onto actual bookshelves.   Exhausting! 

For the actual dinner I made 2 crockpots of spaghetti sauce.  I didn't know how much we would need, especially since I was feeding my family as well.  We would have been okay with just one crockpot, but we would have had no leftovers (some of which I froze.  Yay!).  I made too many noodles, though.  We only needed 6 pounds, not 8.  The other moms, of which there were 22, brought salads, bread, drinks, and desserts.

We had a great meeting, but no one ate the desserts!  And the moms didn't want to take them home . . . so we were the beneficiaries of 2 plates of cookies, a lemon bundt cake, a pan of pumpkin spice bars with yummy cream cheese frosting, and a ton of cupcakes, covered with sprinkles!  Perfect!  So Caleb got cupcakes for his birthday, as well as a smorgasbord of of desserts to choose from, just for variety!  Nathan asked if we could have a moms' meeting the night before his birthday so that he would also have a huge selection of desserts at his disposal!  At Rivendell the next day I declared open season on all the desserts, so they were all gone by the end of the day, LOL. 

I still owe Caleb a birthday cake though.  I had told him he could decorate one himself however he wanted, although he still hadn't decided on what exactly he wanted his cake to be, so maybe it is just fine to postpone!  The important thing is that now Caleb is 11 years old!  Happy birthday, Caleb!!