Birthday Bonanza

It's official, I'm 31! I am seasoned now. I have entered the REAL 30's. As you may or may not know, I'm pretty into birthdays in general, which I think sometimes makes Rob feel a teeny bit of pressure. But gosh, he somehow outdoes himself every year. This guy does not disappoint!

I've always wanted to do one of those Murder Mystery Dinner Parties (you know, the kind that cost a fortune to buy and you can only use them once). Well my sweet hubs bought me one for Christmas last year called "Pasta, Passion and Pistols: Murder in Little Italy."  However, because you can only use them once, it's been sitting on the shelf waiting for the PERFECT opportunity to really ham it up and get the full experience. Well, that opportunity came in the form of a birthday surprise from Rob the Saturday before my birthday. He sent out legit invites to a few friends, coordinated food assignments and prepped everything to get ready for this awesome night (including reading through the instruction manual a gazillion times to make sure he knew what to do). A one-time-only game is a lot of pressure I guess! 

An hour before the guests showed up, Rob gave me my invite and clued me into what was happening. 

I was ECSTATIC! I instantly ran to the Halloween box and tried to find whatever I could to get into the character of the middle-aged Italian Mama Rosa, wife of the victim. Robbie played my "weak, overly sensitive son" Marco Roni, who just wants to play soccer instead of running the family restaurant. That whole mother-son thing obviously added a whole new dimension to our relationship. 

Our friends showed up decked out in full costume, which just made my night. We had a mob boss, his girlfriend, a psychic, a priest, a rebellious daughter, and her greaser boyfriend/mob boss in training. It was AMAZING!! 

Our friend that played the greaser boyfriend even tried taming his crazy thick hair by slicking it back under a cap all day to prepare. However, as the night went on, more and more bunches of hair would spring forward out of the gel, which for some reason had us all dying. We all tried speaking in Italian accents all night, which only made us laugh harder at every ridiculous twist and turn of events. 

Because Rob wanted it to be a surprise for me, he assigned all the food to everyone else, so we didn't have to make anything! Everyone else brought dinner and it was all soooooo good. Nice move, husband.

Suffice it to say, it was such a fun night!

It's a good thing we celebrated early because my actual birthday, the following Wednesday, was a crazy day. Sweet Rob made Eggs a la goldenrod for breakfast (in true Irion fashion) and then we both worked all day and ended the night with a crazy fun activity with the youth from our ward. We played shaving cream Twister, which really just means about two minutes in that all the young men and young women had a shaving cream fight and COVERED each other (and US) in colored shaving cream. Haha, we were not prepared. And neither were the parents who had to give those kids a ride home. Oopsie.....

But seriously though, how can you regret a night like this?

  What a day! I seriously love this calling with my whole soul. These kids are some of the best in the whole church and I am so lucky to get to hang out with them so much! And I love having Rob in Young Men's right alongside. Such a blast!!

Lastly, my favorite birthday present might have been from Mother Nature. The sweet baby birds in the nest right outside our apartment door finally hatched! We have been obsessing over them for weeks now and have peeked in on their path of life:

A couple weeks ago:

A few days ago:

And for the BEST video of them, check out Instagram (blogger app won't let me upload it here). It is the cutest thing you'll ever see!

Happy Birthday little babes! So happy to be birthday septuplets with you!