Lee's Birthday Weekend Part 1.....

Well, it's official....I am married to a 40 year old man!!! :) This weekend was just wonderful. Despite Hanna and her stupid rain downpour, tons of people came out on Saturday night to help celebrate Lee's birthday. Thanks to everyone for braving the storm to come party! We had roughly 40 people here on Saturday night....Yikes!! That's a lot of folks for our place, but we managed!! The day started with us waking up pretty early, taking Farley to the vet for the weekend and getting started on the cake. This was my first attempt at a "make it from scratch" cake. Lee LOVES chocolate cake, so, naturally, I made a chocolate cake! I started around 8:00 Saturday morning with the icing. That was the easy part. Even if I had to stand at the stove and stir the cream and chocolate chips for 35 minutes. Trust me, that was the easy part!! Then, I started on the cake. This was a triple layer cake. Well, I only have 2 pans....that was the beginning of the fun. So, I decided to go ahead and divide the batter as evenly as possible into two of the pans, leaving what I thought was an equal amount in the bowl. I baked those two layers and took them out to cool. Once they were cool enough to take out of the pans, I washed the pans and filled a third pan with the remaining batter. WOW....that's gonna have to be the base layer....it was HUGE! Oh well.....so, I baked it and cooled it and then I started to assemble and ice. The whole process took roughly 5 hours from start to finish. Ok, Betty Crocker DEFINITELY had a good idea with the boxed cake method! I wish I had pictues of the cake when it was all said and done, but unfortunately, Lee's computer sorta died and we lost the pictures that were on it. Oh well....just for a visual, it was a triple layer chocolate cake...you get the picture?

Ok, so then it was time to get the house ready for the guests. Unfortunately, the weather was NOT too fabulous. Tropical Storm Hanna came to visit us on Saturday. What a pain she turned out to be!! Although, she certainly didn't stop the people from coming!!! In the middle of the treacherous downpour, I had to go to my parent's house, pick up balloons in Leesburg and pick up the BBQ. So, I went to my parent's house to get a few things I would need for the evening and came back home. Lee really didn't want me to drive in the mess by myself all the way to Leesburg, so the three of us piled in the Element and headed to Leesburg. The rain was just crazy! He dropped me off right on the curb at Party City and I ran in to grab the balloons. I ordered 3 mylar and 12 latex balloons, so not a small bunch! When I came out the door, that was when the HUGE gust of wind came through and almost knocked me over and I had balloons pelting me in the face. So, I quickly backed up into the store and tried to figure out the best way to get these suckers into the car without any casualties! Lee ran out in the rain and helped me get them into the truck. Ok, they're in. Time to go get BBQ! We ordered 12 pounds of BBQ (6 lbs chicken and 6 lbs pork) from Carolina Brothers Pit Barbeque. We also got 6 pounds of baked beans, 5 pints of cole slaw, 8 pounds of potato salad, 48 buns and 3 bottles of BBQ sauce. Wow, that's a lot of food!!! If you've never been to or eaten food from Carolina Brothers....PLEASE GO. It is fantastic!!

After getting back to the house, it was time to start decorating! I placed the balloons around the house and put the table cloths down with confetti and all.

Sarah and Greg showed up a little early so they could help with the rest of the decorations while I got ready for guests to arrive. We truly were nervous that we wouldn't have a great turnout because of the rain.....boy were we wrong! I think we counted a total of 42 people, 10 of which were children ranging from 3 months to 10 years. Crazy!!! Because of all the rain, the party was pretty much held inside. After a while, the sky cleared up and people were out on the deck which helped with space!! We don't have a big place!

All in all, we had a great time, and most importantly, Lee had a blast. You only turn 40 once right? Here are some pictures that Polly took of the night's festivities.....now you can see what I mean by all the kids!!!