Golden 31 - Sushi & Sweets

So today is my "Golden Birthday". Thirty-one on the thiry-first.

This morning, I when I woke up, I was greeted by Ruthy. She immediately wished me a "Happy Birthday" followed by "...a tornado is coming". She was right that the weatherman said a major storm was heading our way and we had about 15 minutes before it would be near our home. So we quickly loaded up the van, pulled the truck in the garage, and headed to church to hang out in the underground portion of the building. After about 2 hours, we headed back home to start the day over.

I went to back to the building to get some typical Monday stuff done, which turned into an unexpected meeting, followed by lunch out with co-workers. While out, I recieved a text message from my sister (way to go, Sis!) wishing me a happy birthday as well as a phone call from Mom. On our way back to the office, we ran by Starbucks and I picked a random new drink off the menu to try and it was really good...a green tea latte. By the time I actually sat down to get something accomplished on Monday it was 2:00 PM.

For my birthday dinner, we chose to go out and I picked the place to eat. I took a huge risk taking the whole family here, but it turned out to be a huge hit. I had my first Sushi experience earlier this month a local Tokyo Steakhouse here in Joplin. After my trip, I was told that there was a better place to have Sushi in town, so we tried it out tonight. It was fantastic. All the kids enjoyed it and Rachel was really surprised how much she liked it.

Now, for those of you who are thinking "how you could possibly stomach raw fish" and "why would I feed it to my kids"...there are many, many types of sushi. I played it very safe as we introduced this food to the family. We had some California Rolls (cooked crab, a chunk of avacado & cucumber with sticky rice on the outside and seaweed on the inside), Teriyaki Chicken Roll (cooked teriyaki chicken, avacado with sticky rice and seaweed rolled in sesame seeds, Shrimp tempura Roll (a very large, light batter fried shrimp rolled with cucumber and covered in an incredible sauce, and the family favorite - deep fried California rolls. They are the same as mentioned before, only they hit the hot oil for a little bit and had an extra sauce on them.


I couldn't have enjoyed a better birthday dinner when I knew everyone else really enjoyed it! We headed to Dairy Queen for some dessert of Blizzards and dipped cones. Here are some pictures of our evening: