Mistaken birthday party!!

For Christmas my mother's boyfriend, Steve, gave my wife, Mel, a 2007 calender that he had made up with pictures of us in it and special dates written in. Unfortunately, the one date that was wrong was her birthday. Not a big deal, her birthday is January 30th and it was put in as January 20th.

So today we are celebrating Mel's party! It actually works out well, because next weekend I would have to work and the following weekend would be after her real birthday and it would be the day of the Superbowl!!! Which depending on the outcome of today's game against the Indianapolis Colts, my beloved New England Patriots will be playing in and trying for their fourth Superbowl title in six years. Go Pats!!!!

Anyway, back to the party, I came up with three new recipes that I made yesterday and today that will hopefully turn out well. I made a chocolate cookie bark which was simply melting white and regular chocolate, mixing in crushed Oreos and swirling them together. I also made some layered squares. The first layer is crushed Oreos and melted butter, followed by a layer of cream cheese mixed with sugar and Cool Whip, that is topped with a layer of chocolate pudding, and finally a layer of Cool Whip. For a birthday cake I mixed up a recipe that I found in a magazine. They used vanilla cake and I used chocolate since that is Mel's favorite. But basically it is a "poke" cake, where you make the cake, let it cool, poke holes in it with a fork and then I poured black cherry Jell-0 (before it solidifies obviously) over it. You let it set up, frosted it with chocolate frosting then topped the whole thing with a Cool Whip frosting. I'll let you know how all the recipes worked out and if I'll ever bother with them again.

Luckily I was able to get her 2 gifts from different places before we put on our "spending freeze". Of course she knows where I bought them from because she has been right on top of the bills and has seen the credit card statements and was here when one of the packages came from UPS. One I'm sure she knows what it is but hopefully one will be a surprise.