Keith's Birthday Present

For Keith's birthday, I tried really hard to make it special. Birthday's have never been celebrated "big" in our house. We are pretty laid back when it comes to gifts, celebrations, etc. But this year, I really wanted Keith's birthday to be special. He is really easy to buy for but it is so predictable...so I put in a good effort to do the unpredictable. I'm not sure I succeeded, but perhaps the effort was worth it! Our friend David helped me out by getting some of their friends together and arranging a day of golf for Keith. Keith hasn't really gotten to spend a Saturday playing golf in a long long time. He feels really guilty working all week away from his girls to take a whole Saturday away as well. Yeah, I know, I got a good one! So, David helped me out and did the organizing and the girls and I worked on how we would tell him.


Let me first say, I had grand ideas of doing a birthday week celebration but given my "help" it just wasn't happening. So we settled for the day celebration. Friday morning I got up and made Keith pancakes for breakfast before work. Ava really enjoyed them! And as soon as he left for work, Carli and I worked really hard juicing 6 large lemons to make some lemon bars for Daddy to take back to work after lunch. It was an interesting task juicing lemons when we had no juicer, but we are never short of creativity in our house - the garlic mincer worked pretty well! I had never made lemon bars from scratch and was relieved that the turned out pretty good. Carli spent the entire day telling her Daddy, "Happy Birthday!" All afternoon, I worked hard with my little helpers to make Daddy a birthday card. In my head, it was a lot grander and all, but it turned out okay.


When the girls went down for their naps, I started dinner. I'm weird, I know. But I had planned all week to try to do chicken fried chicken. Since I don't like chicken and the thought of cooking it, much less eating it honestly makes me gag - I had been planning and mentally preparing for this dinner for a while! :) At 2 pm I started the chicken preparation...something about hammering out a chicken breast - yuck! But by 5:30, I had successfully made chicken fried chicken, squash, green beans (for the girls), mashed potatoes, and homemade biscuits with gravy. And I am relieved to say it was all edible and good! ha!

I knew it must have been good because when we got home from a quick trip from Lowes later that night, my house smelled just like my Grandma's house use to smell after a big dinner...fried food! Ha!

Keith really enjoyed his day of golf and he ended up getting most of the day to do whatever he wanted. The guys all went to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings which was a treat as well since I refuse to eat there after having eaten there while I was pregnant with Carli and the smell really got to me. So the birthday gift went over pretty well, I think. :)