T’s 18th Birthday at the Spaghetti Factory + Birthday Cake!

We celebrated T’s 18th birthday this month. EIGHTEEN. Let me sit down for a minute. Hoo boy.

[T in 2009 at Fred’s Burgers next to the Goliath Burger]

This little boy is now 18! I can barely handle this information. He’s 11 years old in this photo, looking so small!  

And here he is on his 18th birthday. He’s grown up so much! He’s now much taller than me, but not quite as tall as his dad. He’s starting his senior year of high school today! All summer we’ve been thinking about how this is his last Fourth of July at home, his last birthday celebrated at home, and his last first day of school. It’s kind of crazy.

On his actual on-the-day birthday, Jake and I surprised him by taking him and one of his friends to a Padres game.

If you go to a Padres game on your birthday, you get a free helmet sundae! 

I was a little sad they didn’t put sprinkles or ANYTHING on top of the BIRTHDAY sundae. But oh well. Whatever. I guess the tiny helmet is a present by itself. Too bad I will never be able to get a free Padres birthday sundae for my birthday.

The Padres played the Arizona Diamondbacks and won 9-8 that day! Woohoo!

Later in the week we had a big family dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory in San Marcos. It was T’s choice!

The birthday boy got this crazy cotton candy drink. I had a tiny sip and it was pretty much what I expected it to be: insanely sweet. But the birthday boy loved it!

For dinner I had my usual plate of Mizithra Spaghetti. The only change to my usual is that I also got a side plate of Chicken Parmesan. I was glad to see it was a true side plate and served separately and not put on top of my spaghetti. The mizithra didn’t seem to be quite as cheesy as it has been in the past – I feel like they have cut back on how much cheese they put into this dish, which has always been the main reason why I love it so much. Next time I’ll see if I can get extra cheese added – I’d totally pay for extra cheese!

Also, they no longer include a drink in your all-inclusive meal. Iced tea, coffee, or milk used to be included. I asked for an iced tea which had an extra charge of $1. Don’t mind but was a little sad to see the extra charge. 

The staff didn’t realize we had a cake for T so he got one round of singing with his spumoni ice cream. He was trying to not be embarrassed but he did turn a little bit red.

Here’s T’s birthday cake! He didn’t ask for anything in particular this year so I decided to make him a birthday bundt cake. It’s covered in vanilla glaze and plenty of sprinkles.

Inside the cake there was a cherry surprise! I used cherry pie filling from Trader Joe’s to fill the inside of the bundt cake.

The cake turned out to be very moist and delicious! I used this recipe for Cherry Surprise Cake from I Wash You Dry to make this really quick and simple cake (shhh, it uses a box mix but the extra additions make it taste more homemade). 

I had bought some special number candles for the cake and even though we had already done the candle thing, T wanted to do it again with his special candles on the actual cake. Happy birthday, T! I can’t believe you’re 18 already!