Busy Week

This week has been a busy one. First off, an official Happy 25th Birthday (last Tuesday) to my husband Graham!! Most of our activity this week revolved around birthday celebrations--one with me, one with friends, one with his family, one with my family. Phew! I already told you about our trip to Oregon which was the first celebration. Last weekend we got together with a bunch of friends and spent the afternoon at Juanita Beach in Kirkland, had a BBQ and then frozen yogurt and a movie back at our place. Unfortunately, the camera battery was dead at the time and so I don't have pictures.
On his actual birthday, I made Graham his favorite breakfast, Dutch Babies. Kinda racist in my opinion, but always a hit:

That evening, we hosted a dinner birthday party with his family, cousins and grandparents (totaling 12 people). We don't have seats for 12 really so we lugged our leather chairs and a card table out side and made-do with what we had. I let Graham pick his birthday dessert from our Creme Brulee cookbook (which was what he wanted), but I'm pretty sure he picked the hardest recipe in there! It took forever but people seemed to enjoy the dessert, despite the fact that I was 2 desserts short (more people showed up than were expected so my sister-in-law Tash and I just had ice cream). Here's Graham with his dessert:



As gifts, Graham received I think a total of about 7 polo shirts (wow was everyone on the same track or what!!??) I also gave him a subscription to Dwell Magazine which is the uber modern home architecture-type magazine that is pretty green as far as its designs go. Graham has been dreaming lately of someday building our own house with radiant heating, solar panels and the like. It'd certainly be cool, but for now, he's just dreaming.

Last night we celebrated the July birthday with my family in this gorgeous new beach park we've discovered in Bellevue (called Meydenbauer Beach Park). We swam in the lake, played bocci ball as well as Graham's new game of ladder golf which my parents made and gave him, threw the frisbee and had BBQed steaks. I made a salad with my first head of romaine lettuce from my garden! Anyway, it was fun to watch my brothers interact with their brother-in-laws. My 21 year old brother was doing backwards flips off the picnic table which made the lifeguard scream. I don't think she realized it was intentional... Here are pictures of all three of the birthday celebrants. My brother-in-law Michael will be 26 on the 26th and my Mom just turned.....uh, 35 (??) yesterday (I'm not allowed to reveal her true age plus she doesn't look it anyway so you wouldn't believe me even if I told you). I love my family!