A “Meat Fest” Birthday for the Teenager

The older my boys get, the more I realize just how much their lives revolve around sports, food and sleep. Repeat.

They’re also asking me to dial it back a bit in the birthday celebrating department. Eeek. But, I get it. I also realize that dialing it back for me is not the same as it is for other people. Hazard of the love language of birthday party host.

When Will turned 17 earlier this year, we really did dial it back. He invited his good buddies – the “lads” they’re called at school – to our local H-E-B grocery store meat department. It’s also vividly apparent all of his friends are at least 6-foot tall. They picked out the meat they wanted to cook and $4,000 and two pints of Blue Bell ice cream later, we headed home for them to fire up the grill.

They were entirely in charge of cooking their own dinner. Thankfully, no meat was harmed and there wasn’t a single morsel left. Scott whipped up a huge batch of garlic mashed potatoes and I made sweet tea. There were no cute signs for the food and I didn’t even send out an invitation!

This is the photo where all his friends humored me. They are such a great group of boys, a few whom I’ve known since they were five! Thanks, guys, for letting a mom document some memories.

The only thing I did do was have my sweet friend Olga make these awesome sauce grill-shaped cake pops. They lasted .043 seconds.

I told Will to get ready. Because at 18, he’s not getting off this easy.

Happy 17th!