A birthday celebration!!!

Once again we had a wonderful Saturday with the M3 Posse and their hubbies. I will tell you that when this group gets together there is no shortage of laughs, food, drinks, sarcasm, or good times. Usually when we get together it is "just for the heck of it" however this was no ordinary gathering. We came together to celebrate the birthdays of Erin, Kelley, and Bob. There birthdays are all within a couple of weeks of each other so we had one big blow out!!

We began the evening at a local Italian restaurant Buca Di Beppo. Paul and I have been there many times and have always enjoyed the food. They serve the food family-style with platters of each entree and everyone gets to sample many different dishes. We had reservations for the infamous "Pope Room". This dining area is it's own separate room with a huge round table, a lazy susan in the middle, and the centerpiece is a bust of the the current pope in a glass case. It was wonderful to have our own private dining area and believe me the lazy susan was getting a work-out with all the spinning going on!!

THE CREW!!!!

Pope Anton would bless all the other patrons as they passed our room.

Me and my honey.

This picture of the girls is priceless. One of the guys growled at Mia and this was her reaction.

After we had done all the damage we could at the restaurant we all ventured over to Chuck and Kelley's for cake and ice cream, after dinner drinks, and games. The girls were in their own little world upstairs enjoying each other.

The Birthday Girls and Boy!!!

Mom made a birthday cake for the honorees, she picked the design herself and we were all very impressed with her Chinese writing:

It says "Happy Birthday" in Chinese. Thank you so much mom for putting all that hard work into a cake for our friends!!

No birthday cake would be complete without candles:
Kelley totally vetoed me lighting 117 candles in her house so we had to settle for the individual numbers. I will leave it to you all to guess the ages of the 3 celebrants that total 117!

It was soon time to bust out the Guitar Hero game. We have had so much fun with this game and even though Christie remains the Guitar Hero Queen we really learned who the "closet rocker" was during the night.

Paul and Christie playing a little tune.

It did not take Valerie very long to decide that Guitar Hero just wasn't her cup of tea.

The closet Rocker:
Who knew that Chuck would surprise us all and rock the house!!

After guitar hero we also did a little singing with the pop star game.

We were also able to introduce Valerie and Gary to the Wii game system. Gary really got into the action. I think we have successfully created another Wii junkie.

I love this shot: Gary is putting his heart and soul into it swinging his "tennis racket" while Valerie appears to be saying "What the frig? The ball never comes to me!"

Overall it was an awesome evening with good friends. We are so lucky to have not only crossed paths with all these people but also made some great friendships!!

Can't wait to do it again!