The last day of the month always gets my butt in gear with catching up the blog, because my OCD just couldn't handle a birthday blog for Asa listed in April.
This year Asa got to share his Birthday Extravaganza with a friend from college, Allison! She is the first non-family visitor to the new house. Her birthday is three days after Asa's, so that just meant lots of cake and fun outings.
Allison arrived last Tuesday, and quickly made friends. Phenom enjoyed her company and Dipper had coffee with her every morning.
We mostly ran errands on Wednesday, and at some point that week (days have gotten a little murky for me), Allison mentioned she wanted to have a Cuban. We figured there was no better time to try out Larry's Deli, home of the three foot Cuban. It doesn't come pressed apparently, but we fixed that in the panini press. It was good, but we've had better. Next time we'll have to take her to the Columbia!
She's our first visitor since the country project started too. If you visit us this year, you'll just have to deal with the weird meals. I don't have time to stop for guests. But, that's fine, Allison made a great sous chef for Asa. She was here for Switzerland, Monaco, Saudi Arabia, Jamaica, and Jordan in honor of her husbands deployment.
This year his birthday fell on a Saturday of a work from home week. That's hardly worth taking a day off, especially when you need a whole slew of them for Hawaii. He decided to work, but we hit the pool before hand, and when we first got there we had the whole place to ourselves.
For Asa's birthday the last two years we played True American. This year instead of True American, we played 'True World Hero'. Some concept, just with countries we have already learned about instead of presidents. Our middle tower of snacks were all international cookies, and if you made it to the center first, you got the box of Pocky Sticks. We also had international drinks in the middle. First place got to pick any drink they wanted, 2nd place got to pick out of what was left, and so on. Peyton was the winner, Calib brought up the rear. I told Allison she could play if she wanted, or she could just watch. She chose to watch, but she did get to try all the cookies!
I did get Asa the new Zelda game for his birthday too, so he's been playing that quite a bit. I told him he could move the WiiU to the big TV and he was pretty excited about that.
Asa picked his birthday dinner. Usually I mention something when I think a meal isn't diverse enough- in both food groups and color. But, I just let him go.
I present to you Asa's birthday dinner: Yellow.
I mean he asked for the Nancy Reagan Mac & Cheese, Biscuits, corn, pineapple, and blintzes all seperately. But I feel like if a little kid was asked what he wanted for his birthday dinner and he said 'yellow' this would be the meal.
He did go outside the box with cake though, and we ordered a Chantilly cake from Publix. I'll never pass up a reason to have one of these cakes, they're my favorite. (And usually he has Funfetti, but that was Allison's pick, so he actually got both.)
We did Facetime with mom and grandma per usual birthday tradition (and yes, that's Calib putting Phenom on the table----- AN-ARCH-EEEEE!)
That night our neighbors also brought over all kinds of Disney snacks. They had been there all week and had a ton of snack dining credits left, so they loaded up and brought us some treats. They didn't even know it was Asa's birthday, and they just showed up with cookies and a cupcake anyway.
Sunday Hayden and I stayed home to work on school work while Asa, Allison, Calib, Peyton, and Ellie went to the Buddhist Temple. They brought me back all kinds of food, so I didn't miss too much. And apparently, Ellie made a friend.
We decided Monday would be a Disney Springs Day, so we got up and headed out. Our first stop was to see Beauty and the Beast. Allison and I really liked it, Asa was just ok with it.
Then we spent our day doing a Disney Springs Food Crawl (my favorite), intermixed with some shopping.
Our first stop was Morimoto Asia for sushi and sashimi for Allison. I don't know about all the raw fish she ate, but she was happy. (And our more cooked soft shell crab roll was awesome).
Asa even shared some of his steamed buns, which if you know how Asa feels about sharing his steamed buns, you'd be quite impressed. I debated on what to get, but settled on these crab rangoon spring rolls. It was a good decision, they were delicious.
After that we were off to the Hanger Bar.
Allison and Asa got some weird Hanger Bar drinks, and I stuck with my favorite (non-alcoholic) drink on Disney Property, Teddy's Tea.
We also stopped for Poutine. It was the first time we got the French version, complete with mushrooms and Guyere. I had not been sold on this one, but Asa had been lobbying for it for awhile now. I can't believe it took so long to convince me, it is probably my favorite at the Daily Poutine (and there were SO. MANY. MUSHROOMS).
After some shopping we stopped for Margaritas (well, they got them, I had ice water). The bartender was pretty heavy handed on them, probably due to the duel Birthday buttons we had picked up.
And the birthday buttons came in handy. It got us a free Dole Whip, which they apparently have at Disney Springs now. Allison really wanted to try one, since I always talk about them, and we thought we would have to stop by the Polynesian, but the Marketplace snacks booth has them. Fun fact: There it has to be called 'Pineapple Soft Serve' because they don't have the licensing for it. But, it's a Dole Whip.
We did some more shopping, and stopped my the lego store.
Allison was there on business, so I happily put together a whole town of awesome lego people.
By now we were all slightly hungry again, and Allison and Asa really wanted some more steamed buns, so we decided to stop back at Morimoto Asia, but instead of eating inside, we went to the street food window. I also got the cold noodles that we had when we were there for South Korea Day during the Olympics. The guy at the window hooked the birthday kids up with all kinds of freebies: a drink, a sushi roll, and 2 free steamed buns.
We finished up the day by splitting a 'Green Stripe' pizza at Blaze. I wasn't at all hungry anymore, but we had mentioned it, and Asa convinced us we had to have it.
We were there for like 8 hours, a new Disney Springs record, but we had lots of fun.
When we got home, Allison showed off her lego project. Hayden was impressed.
Tuesday was Allison's birthday, and she requested (very politely of course) for juice boxes and Cool Ranch Doritos at the beach. We had to deliver. Peyton stayed home, which was fine by me, because then we only had to take once car.
The beach was pretty busy (I had to drop everyone off to find a parking spot), I guess I underestimated how many people would still be on Spring Break. Asa and Allison found a good spot though, so we had our Publix subs we brought along for lunch and then enjoyed the sand and surf for awhile. The Gulf water isn't particularly warm yet, but you do *kind of* get used to it.
After awhile Allison went back up to the chairs and towels, while we stayed in the water. I saw her waving her arms and then a whole swarm of seagulls fly away. They had totally shredded her Doritos bag and eaten every last one. The bag was even wrapped up and under some stuff! They REALLY wanted them apparently.
By the time Allison found the bag, they were all pretty much gone, except for a few crumbs and a couple of insistent seagulls who just HAD to have every last crumb.
After the seagull incident, we decided it was nearing time to leave, anyway, so we went up to rinse off and let Hayden play on the playground while we dried in the sun.
We had plans for Eggs Benedict for dinner, but by the time we got back into Land O Lakes, Allison called a birthday audible and we had Taco Bell instead.
And of course we had her funfetti cake. I made one layer strawberry and one layer funfetti.
Allison headed home on Wednesday, but we had a really nice visit and we're hoping she comes back soon!
Last, but not least, Asa did such a good job on a call with some 'high up' at Verizon and so she sent him a thank you note and a care package for the family.
Next Up: WWII week per Peyton's request, Calib has since dubbed it 'Good Food Week'.
