Genevieve's "Birthweekend"

I know it is a little bit late posting this but as I said before, I am gonna try and keep this blog updated so here goes.....albeit a bit late.

So the weekend of Friday 2nd November thru Sunday 4th November of this year was Genevieve's "birthweekend". No that is not a typo.....it is a new word which I had to create to describe the 3 days of festivities that we enjoyed to celebrate Genevieve's "birthday" on the 2nd Nov. Of course we could never disclose the age of a lady, but suffice to say that she will always be significantly younger than her hubby and leave it at that.

Birthweekend - Day 1 (aka "Birthday Classic")

It started early on the morning of Friday the 2nd when Genevieve had to get up for work (Yeah I agree, what a bummer to have to work on your birthday.....In my opinion they should pass a law where everyone gets their birthday off work/school each year.....that would be cool.....write to your representative now!). Anyway, after getting up and opening the cards and pressies with Cameron and Mackenzie (since I was already at work before the birthday girl awoke), Genevieve went thru her work day morning routine. On arriving at work she was greeted by her office being decorated with balloons, streamers, glitter confetti and a big Happy Birthday banner. Which I think got her birthday off to a good start and got a big smile, if not even a tear or two. I had sneaked over to her office cubicle the day before and basically went as crazy as I could with decorations and it seemed to get exactly the reaction I was hoping for. :-) That evening, Genevieve was under strict instructions not go over to the Pengelly's house (our next door neighbors. We had planned to go over for a birthday dinner, but Genevieve was unaware of the surprises planned. I managed to get away from work early and headed next door to get ready. Rachelle (from next door) and I had planned to decorate the place with pink balloons and streamers all over the place and set to work. Rachelle had also got a load of Disney princess stuff to decorate the place too which was pretty funny. Once dinner time arrived I escorted the birthday girl to the neighbors house where upon she was greeted by about 10 adults and kids in Disney princess party hats shouting "surprise". The look on her face was priceless (and may be posted on this blog as soon as I get a copy of the pic).

We all then dined on lovely meal of nice steaks and Alaskan king crab legs followed by a homemade chocolate brithday cake (Mmmmm!). After dinner we got all the kids off to bed and played Pictionary (one of Genevieve's brithday presents). We played boys against girls and I was paired up with Darcy (Rachelle's husband) and Genevieve partnered with Rachelle. The girls well and truely beat us (at least 3 times just to be sure). I think Darcy and I's talents obviously lie elsewhere.....but not sure where. Well after several hours of this and a number of hands of Euchre (a 4 player card game) it was well into day two of the "Birthweekend" and bed time came around.

Birthweekend - Day 2 (aka Birthday 2 "The Birthday Strikes Back" )

Well the highlight of Saturday's festivities was the evening. Our good friend Don, with whom we always spend time with esp on each of our birthday's, had something good planned. Genevieve had a babysitter for Cam and Mac and got dressed up in our "fancy" clothes and headed out for a more sophisticated evening. We picked up Don and to begin the evening headed to the Gruet Steak house ( the old Monte Vista Fire Station) on Central in Albuquerque. Check out the menu at this link. Anyway we had nice bottle of Gruet Brut with a delicious cheese plate to start. We followed this with the delicious steaks (10oz Filet Mignon for Don and I with the birthday (day 2) girl having stuffed roast tenderloin with wild mushrooms and garlic spinach together with a coldwater Australian lobster tail) and we all shared a nice bottle of Gruet red wine.......(Jeez...I am drooling on the keyboard as I type and just think about it again.) . The meal was rounded out with 3 great desserts, one of which included the obligatory birthday candle of course!

The evening the proceeded to Popejoy Hall to see the musical based on Billy Joel's songs called "Movin' Out" (see wiki link for more details) since Genevieve is a fan of Billy Joel's music and piano skills. We all enjoyed watching the show and the dancing which accompanied it and played out the stories told by the songs was amazing, and even I have to admit (not being a Billy Joel fan and preferring punk to piano) the show was great and good fun. This was despite the fact I could not join in with the singing of every song word for word like Don and Genevieve both seemed to be able to do, I have to admit my foot was tapping rhythmically all the way through it.

Birthweekend - Day 3 (aka Birthday 3 "Return of the Birthday")

By the time Sunday came around we were both starting to feel the wear of the festivites on us and were glad to enjoy a (little) bit of a lie in bed to start the day. As 11:00am approached folks started arriving for the "football birthday" day. We invited friends to come over and watch the Bills (of Buffalo of course), have some pizza and hang out. Quite a few folks showed up (even including one of my old friends from Ireland who was in town that weekend) and we had nice relaxing enjoyable afternoon watching the football. Even the Buffalo Bills helped the birthday celebrations along by providing a runaway 33-21 win over the Cinncinati Bengals.

After the football we headed over to the Jewell residence for sunday dinner and as is the tradition, the birthday person get to decide what is for dinner that week. I have to say that Genevieve made a fine choice by selecting chile with a raspberry trifle for dessert. (Have you noticed a theme for enjoying good food all through this weekend yet????....hard to miss eh?).

This rounded of the final day of the "Birthweekend" and with full tummy's we all headed home to sleep off the overindulgence before the work week arrived again.