Mike's Birthday

We celebrated Mike's birthday on Sunday at lunch this year.  We could not do it on Saturday because Laura was in a Mudder run that took all day.  After hearing all the stations she had to run through (crawling through mud, slithering thru ice water, and being electrocuted on purpose), I think we should have had the party on Saturday and convinced her to skip the run.  This is the second year she has gone though so I don't think I could have changed her mind.

Mike is on a diet so when planning the party I somehow ended up creating a menu that contained most of my favorite dishes.  The only thing he would eat on it were the jalapeno burgers.  I also invited Suzanne and Heath so I had to add vegetarian dishes.  We ended up with regular hamburgers, mushroom burgers, asparagus, strawberry quinoa salad and caprese salad.  I did not know what to do for Mike's dessert but Suzanne and Heath solved that dilemma.

Mike's eats sugar free jello on his diet so they made him a sugar free jello mountain and had a matchbox jeep driving on it.  This was a very appropriate dessert as the theme of the party was Jeep.

The party theme was not a surprise to Mike as Alexa spilled the beans.  The yellow light was flashing on my Amazon Echo and while Mike was in the room I asked it to deliver my shipping notifications.  Alexa told everyone present that the jeep party napkins had just arrived.  With such a hint, it did not take Mike long to figure out what was going to happen on his birthday.  Still I think the napkins were worth ordering.  Everyone commented on how appropriate they were.

Mike received many different things on his birthday and we were told a few more were coming.  We had to send Emily the picture of this item that Suzanne and Heath gave him.  It is a portable Win flag to take to the Cubs games.  She had given him one previously but it is huge.  This one is more practical and possibly less embarrassing? 

Definitely a good start to Mike's last year of his fifth decade.