Miss Molly's Family Birthday BBQ

I cannot and will not take full credit for the family birthday BBQ my husband, bless him, was fantastic and helpful. And the menu was taken from my favorite website http://relishrelish.com/ish.com/ (my menu planning site) and since I am fairly brilliant at prioritizing and planning ( I mean come on, I am a teacher that is what I do!) it went off I think without a hitch, I wasn't stressed out, and we were able to get it all in and people back on the road in four hours! We started on Saturday, and thankfully we have our cleaning lady Carla and the house was in good shape so that wasn't something that we had to spend a lot of time on. Brian did work on the backyard quite a bit even though it was a downpour all day and we weren't really out there at all. I marinated the BBQ chicken (in homemade BBQ sauce) the day before, shucked the corn, made some chunks of ice with slices of lemon and lime frozen in it, and started the beans in the crock pot right before going to bed.
I woke up on Sunday morning fairly early, took a shower and all that jazz then proceeded on anything else that needed to be done. I had to do the dishes a few times, and Brian vacuumed for me. I made lemonade in my cute glass jug, and pre-baked the pizza crust. My parents arrived early to help if needed. It was great because they brought Molly a play table for her playroom and she was set for the rest of the day practically, they were able to distract her a bit and I finished some things up (made my mom and dad a blended coffee drink) eventually we were able to pry Molly away from her pretend kitchen and new table and my mom helped me make the California White Pizza (this was delicious... I changed the recipe a bit, but I have to say it was so good!) it had a garlic butter and parsley base, sliced black olives, artichoke hearts, and a 6 Italian Cheese blend on top. So good! This was my veggie stand in for the vegetarian in the family. The corn was cut in half next, and boiled with a little bit of milk (this is something my mother in-law does and I have started doing it myself, I don't know why it is done, I don't question it, I just like that the corn tastes more flavorful and softer some how) Brian got the BBQ started for the chicken and I got the pizza in the oven in time for everyone else to arrive.

By the time it was all ready Molly was hungry! She had a drumstick (she ate it all the way to the bone seriously!) she had a slice of watermelon (thank you auntie Jenn and Uncle Jim) she had two mini-slices of pizza some beans, a second try at a drumstick (that one only had a few bites out of it) We then took a break from eating for presents, Molly got some really great presents!

Then to finish the day she had her cupcakes! She had a shy moment when everyone was singing her Happy Birthday, and it took her a bit to figure out how to "blow" out the candles but eventually she managed it. We also had a bit of ice cream to go with the cupcakes. The cupcakes gave her her second wind, but all in all it was a great day for Miss Molly. She ended up going to bed at 5:00pm, she was a tuckered out little girl!

Birthday Breakfast

I try to make birthdays a big deal, but my husband really does a fantastic job of kind of ruining them. He always knows his presents ahead of time because he doesn't want anything that isn't TOTALLY specific; I usually have to get his help in order to get the present for him. This year he has a new obsession which is a dual sport motorcycle, essentially a dirt bike that can also be ridden on the road. I am not that much of a fan of motorcycles, they are dangerous after all. But with his long commute you can't argue with $3 a week in gas. Plus when he drives the motorcycle I get the Prius and Stella (our beautiful '87 Volvo station wagon) gets to take a break. For his new obsession he wanted a new jacket, one with armor in it, which considering how motorcycles are death traps anything to make him safer is a good idea.

I also try to do/make anything that the birthday boy would like. At first for breakfast he said he just wanted eggs on toast (he isn't a big breakfast guy) and then I brought up cinnamon rolls. He thought that sounded great. I found a knock off recipe for cinnabon cinnamon rolls using the dough setting on my bread maker. I looked into the possibility of doing the delay setting so that I could do all the ingredients at night before going to bed, set the timer, and it would start on its own and be ready by the time we woke up –the dough that is. This was not possible because it called for warm milk, melted butter, eggs etc. All things that you can't have sitting out overnight. So my timer was set like always for school wake up time, 6:00 am (let's face it my daughter wakes up at 6:30 give or take a few minutes every day regardless so it isn't a big stretch to get up at 6:00am but humor me a bit) and moseyed on downstairs to make it while I was barely awake. Then Molly woke up shortly after I gave her pancakes with strawberries, she wolfed them down I think she ended up having three! Then the next thing I know Brian is awake and downstairs way before I expected him, we are just not a family of late sleepers apparently. He wanted to get an early jump on his day of riding his bike, so I had to speed the process of the cinnamon rolls up a bit, but they were still very good. I think I have the cinnamon rolls down, they were excellent.

Cinamon rools after they baked before the icing.

Brian enjoying a bit with coffee.