Celebrating Alissa's birthday and other tidbits from the weekend

It has been one fun and full weekend. It all started on Friday when Courtney and Tizita arrived bright and early, despite some pretty snowy roads for Preschool. If you saw my previous blog, you noticed that Tizita started the trend of the Mr. Potato Head glasses in my classroom. Such a leader we have. After Preschool, Tiz and I had some serious food prep getting the spaghetti pies ready for Alissa's birthday dinner. I had never made spaghetti pie before and Alissa had never had it, but Nathan mentioned that he had been missing spaghetti pie so I took his mom's recipe and Tiz and I went to work. Alissa decided it would be an all right meal as long as her pie was meatless.
Here is Tiz preparing the ricotta cheese, egg, and parsley mixture. The original recipe actually called for cottage cheese, but I switched it to ricotta for personal taste reasons.

Here are the two pies without the mozorella cheese on top. This is before we put them into the oven for the first step in the baking process. I didn't get a picture of the finished products but they looked great and they tasted very, very good. Even Nathan told me that they tasted very much like the way his mom made the spaghetti pie. A successful endeavor indeed.

Here is our Happy Birthday girl with Tizita. I made her the crown so everyone would know she was thirty!

It was a Bon Jovi Birthday for Alissa. John and I gave her a coffe table book and their newest CD. I think we found the perfect gifts for her.

Five lovely ladies celebrating the big day.

And of course, there was a goody box which involved lots of guessing. Here Tiz is trying to help Alissa decide what might be in this package.

While playing "Pin the olive in the Martini," Nathan ended up putting his olive right here on Alissa head.

Here are the results of the Martini game. We always try and do some "pin the something on the something" at our parties. It is a game we never outgrow.

On Saturday, Alissa, Nathan, and Courtney left for Oshkosh where Paul's band was playing in honor of Alissa's birthday and Tizita stayed with us. We took her to the Olympia Ski Hill where Alex and Hannah Thompson and Nic Hieden were snowboarding. Here she is drinking her first ever root beer. Sorry, Courtney, there were no other options except water and after consulting Vikki and Deb we came up with root beer being the lesser of all evils!

Tiz enjoyed playing pool on the table with Mallory.

We spent some time out watching the hill up close and personal. Hannah and Alex would wave to us each time they rode up the chair lift. Tiz loved watching them zoom down the hill.

It was a very fun weekend and I think Alissa had a good birthday. I also think Tiz had a very fun weekend with Grandma and Grandpa. We took her home today. We are tired but happy!