Lil' Man's birthday extravaganza

After this past weekend I'm convinced that God hates Disneyland. Otherwise why would it have been 472 degrees there this weekend? I swear it was hotter than the Devil's backyard out in Anaheim on Saturday and Sunday. How is it possible to wear SPF 50 sunblock and still get a tan? SPF 50! My poor little guy was sweating like a slave in the field all over that place.

God must hate Disneyland because he (or she, whatever you believe) has filled it with rude, selfish people who walk at you and through your group as if you weren't even there. I felt like Sam (Patrick Swayze) in Ghost when he was first realizing he was dead. If only I had a penny to slide up those people's foreheads to let them know I was there...

He's also filled it with evil temptations to buy things that are ridiculously expensive compared to stores not located in the Happiest Place On Earth. For example, water. Water does not cost $2.00 in the real world. It costs $4.00 for a six pack of 24 oz. Aquafina at the grocery store--$3.00 if it's on sale. A Pirates of the Caribbean coin medallion is $18.00 there. I'm sure it's less elsewhere. And since when is a plastic spray fan/mister combo $17.00?

OK, so God hates Disneyland or God hates me. Probably a little of both. Despite all of that, we did have a fun time at Disneyland and California Adventure so it all worked out.

It was Lil' Man's 11th birthday on Friday and I was on non-stop birthday duty from that morning on. I took the day off work so that I could prepare for our weekend and also take cupcakes to his class to celebrate. This was probably the last year he'll let me do something like this since next year he'll be in Jr. High. He'll be too cool for all that in Jr. High.*sigh*They grow so quickly.

I made chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting (per request). They had to be Transformers cupcakes too. Lil' Man is all pumped on that right now. Only problem is that 4 different party stores and 2 grocery stores had nothing in the way of cupcake or cake toppers. It was too late to order something on-line so I had to be resourceful. I created a stencil based off of logos I found on-line, but realized I'd be decorating for hours to make that work. I didn't have hours. I found some cool hologram stickers at the party store, the last two packs left, and cut them out to be cupcake toppers. They came out pretty good and Lil' Man was very happy about them--I win. :) I was also pretty excited to finally use the cupcake carrier I purchased from Target a couple months ago. So here are the pics of the cupcakes and my super fab carrier:

After school let out Lil' Man and I had lunch together, went to my friend's house to celebrate a little more, and then went home to make his requested dinner of steak, fries, and mac-n-cheese. He opened gifts from us and the rest of the family that night--he got money, Disney dollars, a computerized chess game that teaches strategy (he loves playing chess), a Transformers battle gun, Transformers t-shirt, CD, cologne, a baseball jersey, and an iPod nano. Yeah, he did very well for his birthday. :)

After my first Spanish class on Saturday we headed out to the Devil's Parks and made a weekend out of it. I'm glad we stayed at a hotel nearby because at the end of the day from walking all over it's nice to be close. It was surprisingly not as crowded as I thought it'd be for the holiday weekend and all the rides we went on had waits of 10 or 15 minutes max.

On Saturday night we had a special dinner at Blue Bayou which is the restaurant you see when you're on the Pirates ride. The food was really good and we had a nice time. My Mom booked a surprise reservation for us there and it was really great. I know you like to see food (let's be honest, so do I)...so here are our meals...fillet topped with a Bearnaise sauce, scalloped potatoes, and spinach for me (Hubbs got the same with steamed veggies) and prime short ribs with scalloped potatoes and veggies for Birthday Boy. Dessert was a chocolate mousse with lots of whipped cream and two chocolate coins made to look like Mickey.

So there you have it, the reason for my absence in blogging and the weekend in review. It's a long post, so hopefully you made it through. It was a really fun weekend so I wanted to make sure and share at least the highlights. Thanks for sticking with it! :)