Birthday Boy

My darling son turns 11 years old today.  It's hard to believe both my kids are in the double digits. We wanted to have a surprise party for him on Friday, but it all fell through.  Most of the boys had a boyscouts activity, but I did have a few that would have made it.  Then our baseball game was cancelled due to rain and the new game was rescheduled to Friday. So instead, we'll just bring a big cake to share with the team after the game.  Since we aren't having a party for him, we wanted to make sure he had a really special day today.

I planned to make him breakfast in bed, but I guess he was too excited to sleep in and woke up early enough to see his dad leave for work.  For his breakfast I made french toast.

We drove out to Seattle for lunch.  Tom Douglas has a restaurant called Serious Pie on Westlake Ave.  For those of you who don't know Tom Douglas, he is one of Seattle's famous chefs and restaurateur. He has appeared on Food Network Iron Chef and other shows. He has many different restaurants in Seattle.    When you enter this restaurant, there are two levels.  At the entrance is Serious Biscuit.  DH heard that the fried chicken biscuit is really good.  We haven't tried this one out yet, but the menu looks pretty tasty.  Upstairs is the actual restaurant.  The tables are long and there are several rows of them which you basically share with other people. The menu is not big with too many things to choose from.  They have 7 different pizzas plus a special, a few starters, and desserts.  The pizzas are baked in a wood fired oven and the crusts are thin, crisp, and tasty.  Each pizza is an oblong shape cut into about 8 pieces.  They range from $15-$18.  We ordered:

DS ordered a bottle of Mexican coke for his drink.  The difference is the Mexican coke has real sugar, whereas our american coke has high fructose corn syrup.

Roasted Seasonal Mushrooms, with Truffle Cheese.

I love mushrooms and this pizza was sooo delish. This one was my favorite.

Sweet Fennel Sausage, Roasted Peppers, Provolone

This sausage pizza is my son's favorite.  We forgot to ask for no roasted peppers, so he just picked them all off.  The sausage on this pizza is really good. I'm not a big sausage fan, but I really liked their sweet sausage.

Yukon Gold Potato, Rosemary, Pecorino

This potato pizza is my daughter's favorite.  It's very interesting to have potatoes on a pizza, but apparently it's one of those new gourmet hyped up pizzas.  It really is good and different, but not my favorite.  Our little family of four finished off all three pizzas!

We got a complimentary birthday dessert:  Tom's Famous Triple Coconut Cream Pie

We looove coconut cream pie and this one does not disappoint.  I remember last year for Mother's Day, my hubby brought home a whole pie. You can buy this whole pie at the Dahlia Bakery in Seattle for $35.  This pie has large shavings of toasted coconut and white chocolate curls.  This pie was not on the menu, but our server suggested it. So make sure you ask if they have it, if this is the dessert you want.  We let the birthday boy eat most of it, but it was really hard to stop at 3 bites.  Once my son finished his dessert, he said, "Now that's a serious pie!"  We had a really delicious lunch, and although I ate a lot, I didn't feel heavy afterwards.  The pizzas we got were not greasy, saucy, or stringy cheesy like most pizzas we're used to.  These were really gourmet and worth their price.



After lunch, we went to the EMP.  (Experience Music Project Museum) It's a big, wavy, metallic looking structure at Seattle Center.

 My son has been wanting to go there for a while because they have a sound lab with instruments you can play.  He is interested in electric guitars.  They have a huge guitar tower.

The labs have different sound rooms.  One room we used had a set of drums, electric guitar, and bass guitar.  It was really loud in our room. :)  You get a 10 minute timer, so others don't have to wait so long for their turn.  We also went into a vocal room.  It has two headphones to listen from and a microphone.  There were different buttons to change the sound of your voice.  Some were Robot, Octave, and I don't remember what else.  We had a lot of fun with those.  We sang "Happy Birthday" and listened to all the different voice sounds.  Unfortunately, only two people can listen at a time.  The EMP is music history.  Currently they have an Avatar exhibit, which we didn't have time to see.  Nirvana exhibit and in a couple of days they will have an AC/DC exhibit.

For dinner we went to Olive Garden.  He rode the whole way blindfolded because he didn't want to know where we were going.  He likes surprises and doesn't like hints.  Olive Garden doesn't give complimentary birthday desserts, but they did sing a song.  We had a full day of food and fun together.


At this moment in time you are:

Playing Pixel Logics on my IPad
Playing Ultimate Alliance on Xbox
Playing Little League Baseball
Into hiking with dad
Learning how to play the guitar (just had your second lesson)
Learning how to play "Set Fire to the Rain" by Adele on the piano
Playing chess
Heavy Christian Rock "Skillet"

Birthday presents you have received today:

Harry Potter Chess set

Hydration backpack