Today was a day to celebrate! There were many reasons:

1.) It is now the weekend for me!

2.) I have a light week next week..

3.) Apparently we are getting SNOW tomorrow!!!!

But most importantly.....We got to celebrate the life of this special young man...

Today was Brett's 21st birthday. Although we didn't celebrate until tonight it was still a pretty good day. He had to coach tonight so I decided to surprise him by cooking dinner and having it at his house when he got done. This ended up being just what he needed because sadly, the lady bulldogs lost and ended their season. They really did have a great season and have so much to be proud of!!

So...I am going to give you a couple of recipes...you will be glad you have them! I was going to try to go all fancy and pull a Paula Dean but then I thought....Brett loves this dish....why not cook this? His eyes lit up when he saw what we were having! For dinner we had a simple recipe of jambalya. Attention!! If you are not so good in the kitchen or if you are great...this recipe is so good and so easy!!! It is almost impossible to mess up!

This is what you need:

2 cups of rice, a can of french onion soup, can of beef broth, 8 oz. can of tomato sauce, 1 lb of sausage, and a bunch of green onions

Also...you will need 2-3 lbs of chicken or shrimp (whatever you prefer) and you can throw in a bell pepper which I love but did not add tonight...

You simply put all of these ingredients into a 13x9 dish and cook for an hour and a half with the oven on 350 degrees. I am telling you....it is so good and so easy.

Dessert was so much fun for me to make..... Brett loves those chocolate molten cakes you can get at Chili's so I decided to attempt to make them. I have to say....I did a pretty good job. Brett claims that "it was better than Chili's!" These are slightly more time consuming but pretty easy as well...Here is what you need:

I used these trays for the individual cakes but you could use the giant-sized muffin pans as well. These were a little shallow but ended up working well. All you do is make the cakes as the box directs and bake them...

After they have cooled a bit take a serrated knife and cut a small hole in the top. Do not go all the way through to the bottom. Essentially, you are making a small crater in your cake. :) Take a spoon and slide the excess cake out creating a "crater"

Then take your fudge (already heated in the microwave for about 45 seconds) and fill the hole with the fudge! Stick your cakes in the freezer for at least 2 hours before serving.

Take it out...Pop it in the microwave for about 45 seconds...Stick a scoop of ice cream on there and top it off with the hard chocolate shell! It is delish!

The birthday boy also enjoyed reading his new Bible on his birthday.. haha. Okay just kidding...I mean, he really did get a new study Bible from my parents but he was really just reading Song of Solomon... Don't let him fool you! :)

Then...my gift. He wasn't quite sure what it was......

But I think he was pretty happy....

Hopefully I was able to make his 21st a memorable day! Oh, an in case all of you in Alabama haven't heard...we are apparently getting a little visit tomorrow. How I wish we could wake up to lots of white stuff. I fear it might only be a small amount. Oh well...it was enough to cancel school for my fourth graders tomorrow and they were simply thrilled about it! Everyone bundle up tomorrow!