Happy Birthday Christian!

Today is a very special day...178 years since the church was organized, General Conference (luckily, we have DirecTV and the BYU channel and therefore we can watch conference from the comfort of our couch!), and Christian's 32nd birthday!

Christian got beef jerky from Ethan, his favorite cereal from Aidan, chocolates from me, and a guitar (well, money to purchase a guitar) from parents, in-laws, and us. Yay for pooling resources! Christian had a guitar years ago. He took it on his mission, and at the end of his mission, sold it to a member so he could have money to get back to Utah to be with (and marry) me. So, I wanted to pay back the "favor" by getting him a guitar. Awww. And, of course, we got a job. That's the best present of all!

Here's his birthday "cake": a lemon meringue pie, made from scratch.

Opening presents...the kids helped a little.Happy Birthday Christian! If anyone wants to leave him birthday wishes, leave them in the comments and I will be sure to pass them on.

P.S. This birthday dinner will forever go down in history as The Birthday Dinner That Wasn't. I made Pork Chops with browned garlic butter sauce. I have made it before and it was really good. This time, the Iowa pork chops I bought were over an inch thick. In order to cook the center, I had to burn the outside, and then the inside was dry. I burned the butter and garlic in the garlic butter sauce. So it was a complete bust. But Christian made garlic mashed potatoes (I roasted a whole head of garlic in the oven) and they turned out very well. Maybe next time Christian should make his whole dinner? At least it would be edible! (If you are interested in the recipe, notwithstanding my terrible cooking skills, I would be happy to e-mail it to you. My sister Brooke has made it many times and never had issues like I did tonight.)