First the kids and I want to mention how much we love Papa. He is our rock (star). He works so hard to make a living for us and to take care of us. He's a devoted husband and dad. It doesn't matter how strenuous or stressful work might be during a day, when he comes home he greet us with smiles; even if he's tired he plays around with the boys and helps with kitchen cleanup. The boys are all about their Papa when he gets home, and since they have an early bedtime, Fer takes advantage of the precious couple of hours he has with them in the evening. Because we have to focus on their routine, we'll have dinner together and then the boys go upstairs for their bath and bedtime routine. Fernando takes charge of both so that he can get the most out of their time together. During dinner, Fer feeds Belle her cereal so that he can have some one one one time with his baby girl (since she goes to bed at 6:30) He NEVER complains about being too tired to be with his kids. He makes the time and finds the energy. HE IS AMAZING! I struck gold when God put him into my life. I don't know what I did to deserve such an amazing man, but I'm so thankful he is ours!
Fer, thank you for being the best person you can be for our family. Thank you for taking care of us, loving us, and being so selfless. Thank you for always helping us to be better. Thank you for taking care of our home and always being willing to learn something new in order to better our lives. There is no better superhero than you. We love you and cherish all of the time we have with you. We promise to try to give back to you the way that you give and give of yourself to us. God has blessed us by putting all of us together as a family. Let's continue to work together to do His will. And let's continue to celebrate your life!!!!
Now for the festivities. Alright, more confession time. I am SO last minute!!! I've been planning lots of things for Fernando to celebrate, but had failed to really come up with that perfect gift. Last Thursday night I laid in bed wide awake thinking about what I should do present wise. You see, earlier that day I attempted to venture out with all three kiddos (after they had been in RE and church nursery all morning and they were exhausted) to hunt down some PS2 controllers. We pulled out the old Playstation 2 awhile back. There are some games Fer would like to show the boys so we thought it would be a fun family activity. The controllers would not work. So my bright idea (since Fernando had conveniently mentioned repeatively that he wanted new ones) was to surprise him with some working ones for his birthday. A few months back Fernando had found some used ones online at a local game store. I thought that perhaps since I knew exactly what I was going in for that I could take the kids in, grab what I needed, and get out. Yeah, I don't know why I thought this....hello...video game store...lots to see....lots to touch. I didn't even bring in a stroller for the baby. I carried her in so my hands weren't free for the boys. DUMMY!!!! The boys took off like kids in a candy store. I mean running around, yelling, excited, knocking down displays. This was serious. I had to wait in a long checkout line to ask someone if they carried the controllers (since I couldn't see any) and it turns out they aren't selling any PS2 products anymore....well AWESOME. So while I'm holding the baby, I'm on the floor assisting a sales clerk with the pick up of the knocked over display. Nico grabs somethings small off another display and will not let it go. I tell the boys its time to go. Oh the scene we caused. I'm telling you. Our lives are a comedy of errors. Max touched everything he could on the way out, and Nico would not give up what he had in his hands. He tried to run out of the store with it and when I tried to guide him (one handed) out of the store he went dead weight on the floor. I found myself half dragging the kid out of the store. All the while he is screaming this high pitch shriek. He continues this mess outside in the parking lot where he tries to run away from me. So here I am in a pickle. At least Max is somewhat follwing instructions as I shout them over Nico's screams. I end up picking up my 36 pound two year old and carry him on my right side while I'm carrying Ms. Chunky Monkey 17 pound 5 1/2 month old on my left. Nico tried to wiggle away, and when I FINALLY reached our car and managed to get my keys out of my pocket without dropping either child it took an act of Congress to get the kid to stay in the car (continuing his screams). You know how sometimes you might feel like you wished you were out in the middle of no where and you could scream out into the dark wilderness at the top of your lungs and just let out your frustrations, well it took all of the inner strength I had, but I managed not to do just that right there in the parking lot...Luckily, most passersby just smiled as they hurridly walked passed and didn't say anything to make me blow up. Even an elderly couple sitting in the car next to ours told me (as I was struggling with getting all the kids in the car) that they had raised three kids and that eventually it would get better. I only commented back...."Really? Will it???...During the whole ordeal I realize that I just kept repeating under my breath, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh", Max's signature expression. He must be rubbing off on me (or me on him). Needless to say, that was a waste of a trip. To make it worse, I had bribbed with a Sonic run. We had not been there in a very long time so my thinking was that I would offer to take them there if they were good for me at the store. Well another dummy move this had been because when I looked at the time Happy Hour was going to end before we could finish at the store. Therefore we had to go to Sonic first. What am I, an amateur!? UGH! Of course there was no reason for them to be good. They got the treat first AND was pumped full of sugar (at least no caffeine, they aren't allowed to have that). So, a few bad mama moves and whamo, the afternoon was shot. And then like a switch turned off, when we got home things were instantly better. Almost like it had never happened. WHAT? Seriously?
So there I am that night pondering in the wee morning hours, what can I do special for Fernando's birthday present since one of the ideas I had for him had fallen to pieces? And then it came to me, 30 presents for his 30 years. I'm telling you, right then it seemed like the best idea ever! Who doesn't like getting 30 presents. It was a great idea, actually, just not a great idea when there is only one afternoon left to shop! Okay, now Friday, what an adventure we had! Thank you, God, for my BFF! After RE classes and lunch, my BFF came by to head out on the present gathering adventure with us. I had compiled a list of potential gifts and a list of locations we needed to hit (in order of priority and efficiency). She was a life saver! Couldn't have done it without her. We went to the bank, Half Priced books, the mall, Dollar Tree, and more. Of course we didn't get it all done before dinner. We went home so I could bake Fer's homemade birthday blackberry cobbler (there's a story there too) and have some dinner with Fernando. After I got baby girl to bed, Ashlie and I headed out once more (kid free this time) to work on the 30 presents. Yeah...we were kind of out until almost midnight, but we gathered up most of what we needed. When we got home, we sent Fernando upstairs to bed and we wrapped his presents. THANKS BFF FOR ALL OF YOUR HELP!!
About that blackberry cobbler. You see, my mom is one of the best cooks and bakers in the world, seriously. And I've learned a lot from her and I get my best recipes from her. In the past I've made some very tasty homemade pies (homemade crust and all). Fernando has come to love blackberry cobbler and it's been years since I've made it for him. I thought I'd surprise him with one as one of his 30 presents. First I need to mention that I may not be one of the best cooks or bakers in the world like Mom, but I'm not bad either. I like cooking for the family and baking homemade goodies for us to enjoy. Mama brain stricks again! I did four things wrong when I made this cobbler. As I'm putting together the blackberry filling I added 2 tablespoons of lemon juice...when I looked more closely at the recipe it actually called for teaspoons...whoopsie! Oh well, I'll just have a really tart pie. I continued on to the crust. Since I'm making a cobbler with a pie crust, I figured I needed to triple the single pie crust recipe. I'm going along tripling all of the ingredients, when I get to the shortening. Apparently I started looking at the double pie crust recipe along with the single pie crust recipe and I got mixed up along the way and ended up quadrupling the shortening instead of tripling. When I started to roll out the dough it was so sticky and falling apart, etc. When I realized my error, it was a little too late to redo...since I was very low on flour. I just ended up using a lot of flour to roll out the dough so it wouldn't stick so bad. Finally I had it rolled out, but I had to scrape it off the counter to even pick it up to put it in the pan. And it fell apart! After repeating this many times I finally just let it fall apart and piece it together in the pan. Thankfully I didn't have as many issues with the top crust. Unfortuanately I failed to put the middle crust on the inside. I had the top crust on before I realized it and there was no way I was going to try to peel that off just to add the inside crust. Also, I remembered, as I was putting the cobbler into the over, that typically I put a little butter on top of the filling right before the top crust...forgot that too! So I figured this birthday cobbler was going to be the epitome of an epic failure. FOUR things I did wrong to this thing, FOUR! Sheesh! As it baked it smelled delicious, but I had my concerns that it would be this nasty mess. However, in my opinion, it turned out to be very tasty! Sure the filling was a little on the runny side due to the extra lemon juice, but it wasn't too tart at all! Actually the sugar and lemon balanced out perfectly so that it wouldn't be too sweet or too tart. The crust was a lot thicker because I had failed to divide it out to put in a middle crust, and it had an interesting texture to it due to the extra shortening. And although it had real potential to be terribly disgusting, the end result was just a different kind of cobbler. No, it wasn't like Momma always made, but it's like Mama made. Fernando and Ashlie told me that it was tasty, and Fer has had a couple of pieces since with Nico enjoying a few bites as well, so I'm leaning towards it be a success considering the circumstances. Present #1 was complete!!!! It was the first gift Fer received. He got this along with a few other things on Friday evening that he could enjoy while Ashlie and I headed out to continue the shopping (a movie, beer bottle koozie with beer, bottle opener, pumpkin seeds,etc.)
Saturday morning (and I mean early early morning) about the time my head hit the pillow after a super busy day of gathering and wrapping gifts, Nico woke up, leading Belle to wake up, causing Max to wake up. Every one of them were in our bedroom around 1 a.m. So I decided to wake up Fer for a second and tell him we were wishing him a happy birthday. Then we played musical beds for a few times in the night. When we all got up the boys retrieved from the secret hiding place the cards they had made their Papa and delivered them to him. The day was off to a great start! I was supposed to make a homemade coffecake (another one of Mom's recipes) but breakfast, but since I had failed so drastically the night before to follow the recipe, I realized I should wait on that until later in the week. Fer decided that he would like birthday oatmeal instead which is typically our breakfast of choice anyway. Let me stress again, we eat this almost every day. I cook just about EVERY SINGLE DAY. I could cook this in my sleep...right?? You wouldn't believe it, I BURNED THAT OATMEAL. I mean, COME ON! What's going on here. We are currently living in the Twilight Zone. (Just to be clear, not "Twilight" Zone with vampires, "Twilight Zone" where everything is askew) We decided then to just stick with the blackberry cobbler for breakfast with a steaming pot of coffee. It actually made a wonderful breakfast treat. Sad about that oatmeal though. Our plans had been to take a family trip over to Lowes for the Build and Grow workshop. Belle fell asleep right before it was time to go, so Fernando took the boys over by himself. They had some good bonding guy time. We didn't want to wake Belle since it was going to be a late night at a wedding for my cousin. The boys and their Papa built an SUV from Madagascar 3. It came complete with character cut outs. When they got home they played with those things most of the day. Max could be caught singing "I like to move it move it" at random times during his play.
It is tradition for us to take Fernando to Saltgrass Steakhouse for a steak on his birthday. Fer and I have been doing this since the year that we were married. Instead of a table for two like we got 6 years ago, we now get a table for five. The meal isn't quite as quiet as it used to be, but it's still nice to see Fer enjoying his favorite food! While we were there, the Tim McGraw song "My Next Thirty Years" just happened to appropriatly come on. Couldn't have planned that better myself. Really, it's obvious that I couldn't. Of course he had specifically requested homemade icecream for his birthday treat....and I had forgotten to pick up the heavy cream at the store the night before. I had been at Brahms to pick up a couple of other things and STILL forgot. Does anyone notice a pattern here?
We enjoyed a somewhat quiet afternoon at home with Fer even catching a teeny tiny cat nap with the baby. We got dressed up in the evening for a night out at my cousin's wedding. Of course the getting ready part was complete CHAOS, but I'm way too exhausted to even bring that up. Let's just say things got a little wild. At the wedding, the bride and groom were so happy. They are beautiful together. The boys enjoyed running around in the courtyard and Belle enjoyed time with her Mema, falling asleep in her arms. Fernando and I got to spend time with our extended family which is always a joy. Of course, we didnt get to spend near enough time, but so it goes when you've got little ones, and that's okay. We got all the kiddos in bed then Fer and I made some birthday nachos, had a couple drinks, and watched Pawn Stars and Dog the Bounty Hunter. We wanted to hold out until the end of his birthday, but didnt make it. I was asleep before the end of the show and Fer followed shortly after....until of course the usual mid-night waking of one child or another (or all). Overall, it was a great day. Of course we are moving forward with celebrating with a Sunday of birthday party planning. We'll take a trip to buy supplies for the party and work on getting our costumes together. Yep, costumes! You will hear more about this later on. Birthday celebration to be continued...
Fer's BEST 30th birthDAY EVER!
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