Sunday, January 23

Doug's Gender Reveal Birthday Party

Doug had been having a rough couple months, since the October life change, so Erika and I decided to throw him a birthday party even though he didn't want one nor did he think that he deserved one.  Everyone deserved a birthday party whether they thought they did or not.  I asked her what kind of a theme we wanted to do, and she said to give her a few days to think about some.  I asked Doug what kind of food he wanted for his birthday dinner, and he said he didn't care.  I did eventually get an answer out of him.  He wanted cubed steak, mashed potatoes and green beans.  I told him that I would make that happen.

Erika got back to me and threw around some theme ideas such as Star Wars, Disney Princesses, dinosaurs and SpongeBob.  I really liked the Star Wars theme, so we agreed on looking for decorations for that.  I'm glad I waited a few days because Erika called and told me she changed her mind.  She said she got to talking with Zach and they wanted to do a gender reveal birthday party.  I asked, why?  She said that Doug needed a little weird in his life and that the idea came from Zach.  I asked her what I was responsible for.  She said, to host it at my house, provide the food and get decorations.  She said she would make the cake and decide if she wanted to make him a boy or a girl.  It was super weird, but I went along with it.

In lieu of a gift, I decided on that Tuesday after work (on a dry evening) to clean and vacuum out his car because the car desperately needed it and I needed some exercise after sitting in front of my computer working all day.  I even organized his glove box by taking out all the papers that didn't need to be in there.  I put those in his file box with all of his other important documents.

I was in Tumwater on Wednesday for my massage appointment, so I stopped by the cemetery to see Grammie and then the Dollar Tree to pick up some pink and blue baby decorations.  I went to go pay for my decorations and the lady ringing me up saw the decorations.  Oh, you're having a gender reveal party.  In my head, I said, yeah...something like that but my mouth said, yeah, we are.  She asked, oh, when is it?  I said, next weekend (at this point I was just answering questions randomly.)  She asked me one more question, oh, do you know what it's going to be?  I said, no.  It was a surprise.  I paid for my stuff and she told me to have a fun gender reveal party.  I thanked her as I walked towards the door to leave.  Well, that was fun.

That Friday, I went shopping for all the food because I had the day off.  We were supposed to go get our Covid booster shots that afternoon at the Yelm Walmart, but Walmart called and canceled them because they were short-handed due to Covid.  Instead, we had to do it another day which was probably going to be after work the next Friday as walk ins.  Doug said he was probably going to do it on Tuesday since he had Wednesday off.  Doug came home early, since he had a half day, and we went to the Walmart and then the Safeway.  He needed a few things and I had to pick up cubed steak and the green beans.  Doug offered to buy the green beans which was nice of him.

The morning of, on Sunday, I got up around 9:30, ate a quick breakfast and started getting the house presentable for people to come over.  I didn't go above and beyond but made sure the house wasn't a total disaster.  I let Ben sleep for a while since he was on a 24-hour shift the day before.  I vacuumed and then set up one of the tables along with the small table on the end.  I didn't want to set up both tables because it's a lot of work to take my work stuff down.

I had the Penguins/Jets game on while I cleaned.  The game went on to a shootout and the Pens won, 3-1.  It was a great win.  

Ben got up and helped me bring in chairs and decorate everything in baby pink and baby blue.  It really did look like we were having a gender reveal party.  The only thing we were missing was someone who was pregnant.  Mom got here early to help me make the cubed steak since I've never made it before and had no idea how long to cook it.  While she did that, I made the mashed potatoes.  It's been at least 20+ years since I've had cubed steak.  She also did the gravy because I don't do gravy.

Everyone showed up around 1 and Mom was putting the final touches on the gravy.  Doug really didn't look that impressed but deep down I knew he appreciated that we had a birthday party for him.  He saw the decorations and thought they were weird.  Erika threw Zach under the bus by stating that the theme was all his idea and that she just made the cake.  We all went into the kitchen and threw some food on a plate and sat down in the living room.  

The Rams and Tampa Bay game played in the background.  I hated both teams and didn't want any of them to win.  I really didn't want Tampa Bay to win because I want Tom Brady to lose and finally retire. 

We ate our food and chatted about random things.  Everyone asked Doug questions, and this was the chattiest he's been since Christmas time.  My guess is that he was just humoring everyone because he had to be there.  The food actually turned out pretty good and I am not a fan of cubed steak and gravy all that much.

We cleared the table and Erika brought her cake in.  I bought two sets of candles, blue and pink, so we arranged them all over the cake to make it look nice.  Before Erika lit the candles, she asked everyone what we think he's going to be, and again, everyone thought that was weird.  I had to think about this for a min.  What would Erika do?  Hmmm.  I knew she was going to try and trick us thinking she picked girl, but that would be too obvious, so I went with boy.  I heard a couple girls and boys as people were guessing.  

We sang happy birthday and then he blew out the candles.  We got him a knife and he cut into it.  HE'S A BOY!  Yay!  I was right!  We all made jokes about him being confirmed as a boy since you know, we needed confirmation.  I am not sure gender reveal parties were all that popular in the 1980's.  I think it's more of a 21st century thing these days.  We all dished up cake and watched the dramatic end to a football game the Rams were trying to give away.  I was getting rather anxious.



The Rams did end up holding on and I was so glad we were going to watch a Super Bowl without Tom Brady in it.  We were all marked safe from Tom Brady.  Now, I anticipated him retiring at some point over the next few weeks.  I am crossing my fingers!  Doug opened his presents.  Mom got him a couple of containers to put his stuff in, so it didn't have to sit in the garage in cardboard boxes and some clothes.  Erika got him a beard hat off of the internet, but it wasn't going to come for a few days and Grandma got him a couple gift cards for Starbucks.  He thanked everyone for the gifts.

Everyone was pretty much partied out and wanted to head home.  I went in the kitchen and started doing some of the dishes and I bought the right amount of food because we didn't have any leftovers to put away.  We had some cake leftover but that wasn't a big deal.  Everyone went home and Ben and I took the decorations down and put the tables and chairs away.  We watched the Bills lose to the Chiefs in the night game.  The last five minutes of the game was truly insane, and it ended up going into overtime.  It was a bummer because I wanted the Bills to move on to the Conference Championship.

Happy Birthday Doug!

Next Adventure:  Some Geocaching and Walter's Birthday   

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