Josh and Becca Thrap and Family

You know, for several years Josh and I joked (only it wasn’t funny) that we were cursed when it came to special occasions. Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, anything. We’d get bad weather, the plans would fall apart at the last minute, we’d have car trouble, we’d get into a big argument, someone would get sick, SOMETHING always happened to mess up what should have been a good time. But lately we’ve been noticing that our luck seems to have changed, and thankfully it held out for Josh’s big birthday weekend. Friday we drove to Coralville where we met my parents who then took Jacob and Elise home with them to enjoy Eagles and Ivories in Muscatine. With reduced children we met the Wheelers for a yummy dinner at the Texas Roadhouse and then we played a few songs of Rock Band at their place before heading home. It was perfect because Josh got to play the drums (he was a percussionist in high school) the Wheelers both got to play guitar (which they LOVE) and I got to sing!–I still prefer the singstar for singing, but it’s nice to have a game where we can all do what we like. Josh was whirling and twirling his drumsticks like a pro! Saturday I took Elena with me to the Y because we hadn’t been able to go on Friday. Josh and Cameron did all kinds of cleaning between video games so by the time we girls got home the house looked great! I took Cameron and Elena to a friends’ for the evening and when Sarah and Scott arrived we whisked Josh away for his special birthday evening. We met several friends and family at Appare Japanese Steakhouse in Des Moines and enjoyed the sushi and teppanyaki!

(Melissa, I’d love copies of all the pictures you took! Can you email them to me?)
At dinner I tried sushi–a spider roll to be exact, and a scallop! (Did not care for either! But I ate both!) And I tried to get some strawberry mochi for dessert, but they were out and so they brought me green tea flavored mochi–omigosh…disgusting! But before I give off the wrong idea, we really did have a wonderful and FILLING meal! We all sang happy birthday to Josh and he got some fun presents. After dinner we came back to our house and played Singstar and ate cheesecake and rice crispie treats generously brought by some of our guests. And the house was still clean when everybody left so when we got the call Sunday morning that church was cancelled due to the weather we just had a long lazy day at home! My parents brought Jacob and Elise home in time for dinner and we had a nice short visit. In fact everything went so well, I was sad to go to bed last night knowing the weekend was over.