Pre-13 Bday party for the tween cousins...

Finally, for the first time ever, my brother and I held a joint bday party for our kids. His son is one day older than TC. I've always wanted to do it because it seemed redundant to have two family dinners either one day after the other or one weekend apart.

Even though it was just my side of the family plus Bert's mom and my BIL, there was still tons of food to go around.


Above, my sister's lasagna, my SIL's friend's homemade empanada (filled with beef, potatoes, peas, and raisins),  lumpia, and in the bowl, my apple slaw.

This shot was taken before my parents arrived...In the foreground, my Vietnamese pork chops with my homemade nuoc cham sauce...

And half an hour later, even more food. You can see my corn pudding there, along with the pigs in a blanket we made, plus my dad's Chicken Tettrazini, which was the hit of the evening.

Mixed in there somewhere was my brother's chopped up steak, along with my mom's fried chicken wings...

My dad must have been in a cooking and baking mood because he also brought spaghetti aaaand...

homemade hopia! Now this was pretty good! Almost as good as the kind I like from Gemmae's Bakery. The filling is yellow mung bean. The top of the cake is nice, glossy, and flaky. I loved it. TC told me that several weeks ago, my dad was going crazy baking mini pan de sals and fruit pies.

Although he's been retired for awhile, he hasn't cooked or baked as an "outlet" but hey, we're not complaining! I don't ever recall him making chicken tettrazini before. It's kind of cool that he's experimenting and making new things. He wanted to bring a noodle dish that wasn't pancit so he brought two kinds of pasta dishes.

All of the kids were there. Sister's two boys (Nephews #1 and #3) plus my brother's four (count 'em) kids (Nephew #2 and #4 &  #5, the pre-bday boy, and 9 month baby nce who usurped TC's position as the youngest girl.

The cookies and cream ice cream cake was from Cold Stone, which I got earlier that day. We had the numberical "13" candles and thirteen skinny sparkler candles.

The youngest nephew had fun trying to blow out the candles.

All of the kids enjoyed the cake, even asking for seconds.

I wish my metabolism was like theirs, ha ha.

Last year's party food can be seen here, when we had separate lunches for the bday's.

The leftovers from that evening would hold us over for the majority of this next week...

Today was #4's real bday and tomorrow would be TC's...