Happy Birthday Drew!

Drew turned 30 this year so we had to celebrate at least a little!  On his birthday I cooked him dinner of his choice and a very decadent dessert that I don't normally cook (Chocolate Cheesecake) and then on the day after his birthday we threw a party for him.  We invited a bunch of our friends to come over for a family barbecue.  We had a great time hanging out with all of our friends and the 12 kids had a fun time running around and playing.

This was Drew's birthday dinner.  He wanted Chicken Tikka Masala, so I made some from scratch.  It came out really yummy!  For dessert I made Double Chocolate Cheesecake because Drew loves cheesecake but I never make it because I am not a big fan.

Drew was pretty happy about that and I think he thought it tasted really good.

For Drew's birthday party he wanted a pinata, but I didn't feel it would be fair to let him hit a normal pinata because he would break it too fast.  Therefore, Alden and I had fun duct taping a pinata to make it more robust.  We put on a layer of duct tape then wrapped a rope around it multiple times so we could reinforce the loop at the top, and then we put another layer of duct tape on.  It ended up being even more effective than I thought it would be, so Drew ended up taking his knife to it to help us break the thing open.

Alden helping me duct tape the pinata.  Anders had fun watching what we were doing.

Here was some of the food we had for Drew's party.  Drew had fun using our Traeger to smoke hamburgers, hotdogs and chicken and then we had the stuff to make burgers, fresh vegetables, grapes, steak fries, strawberry lemonade cupcakes, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and cheesecake from the night before.  If anyone went home hungry it was not our fault! =)

Everyone relaxing and eating food.

We also had a pinata for the kids that was not duct taped and we let them start that one with youngest first.

Alden was a little tentative when he went to hit the pinata.

Some of the other kids knew exactly what they were doing and how to attack the pinata at full speed.

Drew had fun making the pinata swing around for the older kids.

By the end, the older kids were chasing the pinata to hit it.  But, we didn't have them blindfolded so we had to make it harder some other way.

Then it was time to bring out the reinforced pinata.  We joked that it was "the cannonball" because it looked a little like one and no one could seem to break through it.

We even brought out the metal bat for this pinata.

This is just to prove that I did take a turn at trying to hit the pinata open.

Drew finally managed to break it open (after quite a bit of help from his pocket knife) and the kids were all really excited to see what was inside.  They got some candy and nerf darts since one of the guys had joked that I needed to put ammo in Drew's pinata.

Then we got to sing to Drew and make him blow out candles, but we were nice and only made him blow out a fifteenth of the number of candles he should have.  We had a great time celebrating his birthday and we were so glad that so many of our friends could make it and join us for the party!