Birthday weekend

We had a fun, full weekend with my parents in town for my 29th birthday. Activities included cleaning out our basement, antiquing, golf, a trip to the University of Michigan Botanical Gardens, time with Matt's parents at their lakehouse, a birthday dessert with friends, and plenty of excellent meals.

One comical highlight turned out to be the root beer coolers we fell in love with. A few months ago I blogged about the Frosty Freeze up the street from our house. Well, they sell a drink that Matt adores called a Boston cooler, which is actually Vernors ginger ale (one of America's oldest soft drinks that happens to have come from Detroit) mixed with vanilla ice cream. It becomes a ginger ale milkshake and really is delicious.

Well, they also sell the same drink but with root beer, and my mom and I shared a small one on Friday afternoon. Big mistake, as that gave each of us about a dixie cup worth each - hardly enough.

What really got my mom thinking, though, was how on earth they make these milkshakes with carbonated drinks like ginger ale and root beer without soda going everywhere!

This never occurred to me, and I just assumed they had some contraption that took care of fizz and any soda explosions.

But, when we stopped by again on Sunday night for a second serving, it was still nagging my mom, so she asked the girl at the register her question.

The girl's whole demeanor changed. Her eyes bugged out and her jaw dropped. "OH my GOSH," she said. "These are SO hard to make."

She then went on to describe how precarious the process is and how easy it is to get splattered with ice cream and soda. You could tell she really appreciated that we had asked.

Then, she put her game face on got to work on our four coolers. I think she made it out clean.

Now I feel a little badly that we put her in harm's way ... but not that bad. In fact, I think I'll have another one this week.