John's Birthday

As a continuation to John's birthday, when I arrived home from our downtown surprise, John's parents came down in the afternoon. Dorene had just had her chemo treatment the day before, so we were amazed and touched that they came down while she wasn't feeling so great.

The boys were super excited to see Gram and Grandpa. We ate dinner in that night; I tried to replicate Olive Garden's Stuffed Chicken Marsala as that is John's favorite dish...and I have to say it was pretty delicious! The night before I also had an idea to make an ice cream cake. John loves ice cream cake (I'm not a huge fan) so I thought instead of buying one from Dairy Queen I would try to make one. My friend Jen had just made one so I took some tips from her on what she'd do different and such. It was very rich, but oh so good. John loved it, so my mission was accomplished. I put oreos and chocolate chips in the food processor and made that my bottom layer. Froze it. Added a layer of his favorite flavor, peanut butter fudge. Froze it. Added a layer of fudge topping and more crumb topping. Froze it. More ice cream. Last layer of crumbs. Froze it. Again, rich, but delicious. Next time, I think I would do a layer of vanilla ice cream as well to off-set the chocolatelyness....and to show the layers a bit better. I made this 'cake' pretty quickly and in a foil pan...next time I think I would make the ice cream layers a bit thicker. At this point I was just trying to cram it all in.

John got some great gifts including several Milwaukee Tools. It was a great birthday!

The next morning John had to go to work, but his parents stuck around for the morning. It was wonderful! They got to spend more time with the kids...and I got to do some running around and finish some projects. While they were playing with the kids, they also helped out. Bill raked leaves and fixed our mailbox while Logan helped him. Dorene folded some laundry and played with Carter. It was nice having them visit us. The boys were sad to see them go.