Happy Birthday Stephen

My beloved son, my youngest child, is 25 today. I can hardly believe it. Hannia and I have been working for weeks on pulling off a surprise party for him. Between coordinating all the food, decorations, guests, etc....there has been a whole LOT of lying, sneaking, sending coded texts and emails. LOL. I feel a huge relief that its over and done with just because of that. But it was a success. Erica got him here under some guise of running errands with her today. I don't know exactly what she said, but her job was to pick up the cupcakes at the bakery, and to get Stephen here at our house at 12, without him suspecting anything.

I think he really was surprised. He walked in, thinking they were just stopping by the house for something quick on the way out to eat lunch before Erica had to leave to drive back to Va. And as he came through the door, we were all standing around shooting off these confetti-loaded poppers that made a huge bang. So funny. I still have confetti all over the floor.

The food was good. Hannia made chorizo quesadillas (and onion and pepper ones for people who don't eat meat). I made these mediterranean pinwheels that had prosciutto, feta and fresh basil. We had sneaked out a couple of weeks ago to order cupcakes from the Perfect Cake bakery that said "Happy Birthday Stephen" in IPA. IPA is an international phonetic script that dates back to the 1840's (I think. I could be wrong). The people at the bakery really seemed so confused by our request. Even though I had a print out of how it should be spelled. But they got it right, so Yay!

Anyway, it was fun and he was surprised. Everyone has just left. Jack, who came all the way from Richmond is spending the rest of the weekend at Stephen's. Hannia knew about it, and was secretly trying to clean up around the apartment, like anyone would naturally do if they were having houseguests. But she had to do it nonchalantly as if nothing was going on. LOL. Erica is on her way back to Charlottesville, too. I will miss her, but she will be going to Jamaica with us for Christmas, so its only a few weeks before I get to see her again.

And one last update: I went to Rite-Aid yesterday and FINALLY got the stupid prescription filled. All of it. Maybe now that its in the system, it won't be so crazy-hard to refill next month....? Who knows....


Here's a pic of the cupcakes. I am not sure how well the IPA script shows up. Hannia probably got much better pictures than I did. And halfway through the party our camera died and we didn't find the charger until after everyone had left. I had inadvertently packed it up with the Halloween decorations that we took on the cruise....and believe me, looking through that stuff was an absolute last resort since I had it all boxed up and packed away. But we found it, and everything is fine. Hannia had her camera so I don't think we missed anything.