Birthday Extravaganza - Saturday

Woke up around 6:30am, guess I was too excited for the day to start. I did some last minute cleaning (but there wasn't much). Jes woke up around 9ish and helped clean a bit. We had some breakfast and then waited for guests to arrive. Only thing we had to do was move my big screen TV to the dining area where I had set up all the seating. Around 11:30am my friends Aaron and Anne showed up followed shortly after by my buddy Chris. I had Chris, Jes and Anne help me with moving the big TV. Once that was done we prepped the BBQ and sides and got everything ready.

As the hour passed more friends showed up. Andrew, Scott, Luis, Jen Michele and Brian. I had planned to start around 1pm but since we had a few stragglers we opted to get the BBQ going and with the help of Chris we had burgers and hot dogs cooked in no time. It was finally 2 and we needed to get started on the Star Wars Blu-Ray Marathon. I opted to watch the movie in release order Episode 4, 5 and 6 and then 1, 2, 3.  So we all grabbed some BBQ and stated with Episode 4 "A New Hope". While A New Hope was going on a few more friends arrived Rupert, Greg and Alynne (Red 5). The blu-ray picture quality is incredible and the re-edited sound track was amazing. We took a quick break and Michele had to get to work, so Jes who makes plushy version of people had made some for Team Unicorn so she presented Michele's with hers.

After we said our goodbyes we moved on to Episode 5 "The Empire Strikes" Back. While this was going on my friend Michael arrived. Another amazing looking video quality. And honestly I didn't notice any major changes to the actual film. Of course I read about the big ones but nothing really stood out to me, I was just in awe at the crispness of the picture. I was seeing things I'd never seen before in all my hundreds of viewings.

After Empire we ordered some Pizza and my friends Teal and Ali were going to pick them up since they were on their way. So we waited until those guys got here before starting Return of the Jedi. During this down time folks started chatting about the Wars, their likes and dislikes. I then suggested while we wait that we watch Star Wars Lego the Padawan Menace, it was a one off TV special back in July. It was just released on Blu-ray as a Walmart exclusive and my good friend Rick sent it to me for my birthday. I don't think anyone had seen it so I popped it in. After it was over it got high praises from everyone. Just as it was finishing Teal and Ali arrived with the pizzas. So we ate dinner and then started Episode 6 "Return of the Jedi".

We finished that around 10ish and folks started to leave. Greg, Red, Adam, Teal, Ali and Brian all left and Andrew a half hour later. But my best bud Will showed up. During this time I opened presents and we did shots, hung out and wand dueled on the back patio.  I figured we did the 3 episodes today and we would do the next 3 episodes tomorrow. But after an hour or so of just chatting and hanging out we voted to do one more episode so we popped in Episode 1 "The Phantom Menace". In hindsight this was a mistake as towards the end, about half of us were sleeping. Around 1:30 the movie ended and Aaron, Scott, Jen, Chris, Jes, Anne, Luis, Rupert, Michael and Will opted to sleepover. We figured out where everyone was going to sleep and by 2:30am everyone was in bed fast asleep.

I had this posted on my front door :)

Check out more pictures HERE