Freddy's Birthday

Freddy was officially 18 on March 25, which is oddly enough only one day different from our first exchange son, Felipe's, whose is on the 24th.  Eighteen for a Finnish kid, doesn't mean a whole lot here in the US, but when he gets back to Finland he will be able to drink alcohol.... legally.  It was a busy weekend but we squeezed in lots of birthday activities.  The morning of his birthday we had American breakfast, pancakes & sausage, before school.

That night Freddy had a birthday party with friends.  Saturday we went to Birch Run for some birthday shopping and a birthday lunch.  We finally went to Tony's.  It's famous for HUGE portions.  Freddy got the BLT (bacon lettuce tomato sandwich) with 1 full pound of bacon!  He ate much of it but could not finish it.

That night we had a family birthday dinner.  Freddy chose and we had steaks, frites and salad.  Huge sirloin steaks of which Freddy ate the entirety of.  Mike and I split one.  The frites were sweet potato and I made a smoked paprika butter for the steaks. Very delicious meal.

Sunday we had birthday cake.  When we asked Freddy what kind he wanted, he stated that he wanted an American cake.  Isn't cake American period??  No?  Oh okay.  Epicurious was a big helper and I found a decidely American cake, Devils Food Cake.  We topped the three layers with a caramel frosting and it was mouth watering.

 The final part of the celebration was the following Wednesday.  We bought Red Wings tickets for Freddy's birthday present.  We had a great time even though the Wings got slaughtered.  Not a bad replacement for the drinking birthday that he would have had in Finland.