Let's Celebrate

Yesterday, we celebrated Mark's birthday...

 at a teaching workshop.  Woo Hoo!  Not so much!  It's exactly how he did NOT want to spend his birthday, but luckily we had a couple of teacher friends who attended, too.  It made it bearable.  We even all went to eat lunch together at one of our favorite Tex-Mex restaurants so that was fun.

After our teacher workshop we ate pizza with Mark's parents and had cheesecake for dessert.

I made Mark a healthy version of the Cheesecake Factory's chocolate raspberry cheesecake.  I'd link the recipe, but I didn't find it online when I did a quick Google search last night.  The recipe is from Redbook.  Redbook as in the Redbook that you'd see at your mom or grandma's house and the doctor's office.  I don't remember ever ordering a subscription to the magazine; it just started showing up at my house.  Strange.  Does that happen to you guys too?  Anyhow, there was a recipe that looked fairly simple and much healthier for the cheesecake so I tore it out and saved it for Mark's birthday.  I'm glad I did.  I probably won't make it ever again, but since raspberries are easy to find and reasonably priced at this time of the year it was a nice treat.

Once we'd celebrated with Mark's parents, we went home and crashed because we were exhausted from the teacher training.  Boy, I forgot what a full day of work felt like.  I didn't have any energy to clean house or do laundry.  I'm glad the teacher training workshop only lasts a half-day today.

That concludes the wrap up of Mark's birthday with a little more info that you probably wanted to know.

Will, Mark and Ben pose for a photo for his 38th birthday

The boys, Mark and his parents, Carol and Jerry

*If you noticed a couple of pieces missing from the chocolate raspberry cheesecake, it's because we ate them on Sunday night. It was supposed to chill overnight and we just couldn't wait.  We ate a couple of pieces fresh out of the oven.  It was good but I admit that it was better once it chilled and had the chocolate drizzled over the top.