Laurie's Birthday

I love my friends! I have two in particular that are especially close. Laurie is the one I walk with. (except when it's freezing outside and we don't want to risk our life by slipping and falling on the ice) These friends of mine, we celebrate birthdays together. We go to plays at the local Hale Theater with our annual pass that we renew each Christmas. And sometimes we just get together to visit and eat and catch up.

Well, it was Laurie's birthday on December 13th, and it's extremely challenging celebrating at Christmas time and so we got together a little earlier in the month.  Me and Annaleesa surprised Laurie with dinner at a really exciting place called the HuHot.

It's a really neat dining experience to walk along all the food choices and put in your bowl any meat, veggies, noodles, fruit, etc and then top it all with about 5-6 ladles of different combinations of sauces.  Now the real fun is then taking it over to the guys doing the cooking at a very large round grill and they dump out your bowl and cook it in front of you. After a few minutes of cooking they place it on a clean plate where you can then walk over to another area and top it with peanuts, seeds, coconut, crispy noodles, etc.  It's all really fabulous I tell ya.  If you haven't been here you should go give it try.  I know where all of my next birthday celebrations are going to be. I hope my family is ready to eat out here for every holiday and birthday for the next 20 years.

After we enjoyed our meal we had another surprise up our sleeve for Laurie.  She loves music, singing, and having people play her piano so she can listen and sing along.  I'm not a singer but I play piano.  I also have a wonderful friend and mentor who taught me for awhile.  I still call him up occasionally with questions and to just get together to play duets with him.  His name is Harvey Rich and he teaches for BYU and privately in his home.  I had prearranged to take the girls over there for a night of music through duet playing and singing. Laurie was so curious and confused as I drove to his house after our delicious dinner.  She had no idea where we were, or what we were doing, or why I was knocking on some strangers side door.  When he answered and we entered his very spacious piano studio she figured it out and was thrilled with the whole idea of what we were doing.  I also have talked about Harvey so many times to her but she had never met him.  This was fun for me to have her finally meet him and get to enjoy his talents.

Happy Happy Birthday Laurie!  May you have many more and may our friendships last for eternity!!