My Birthday

Hello again friends! As I said Monday was my birthday so today I thought I'd share my day with all of you. Like I mentioned, my friend, Jenny, and I both took the day off. She came over to help me get ready for our party later that night and then we headed to lunch. We went to BRIO for some extra yummy pasta! If I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, I would totally pick pasta! After lunch we headed to FROST for gelato. I got mine for free, and they even decorated it to look like a birthday cake with candles on top!

That afternoon, we headed to Burst of Butterflies, a local art studio, for our first pottery class! We had so much fun!

I got much better as the class went on!

Jenny made four pieces she liked, and I have two closely matching bowls. In a couple weeks, we get to go back and paint our pottery!

That evening we had the neighbors over for pizza!

My mom got me a really cool platter and bowl that can be accented with attachments depending on the occasion. Jenny happens to have the same one so I borrowed her present attachment!

Little Abby was the life of the party!

We always have fun hanging out with our neighbors!

I made myself a Cookie Pie,

everyone sang and enjoyed cake!

It was a pretty fun day! Tuesday was back to the grind...We have a pretty low key weekend plan. Hope you all enjoy your weekend!

Birthday Dinner

Hi friends! Well it's happy birthday to me today. We did most of the celebrating this weekend. Saturday morning I headed to Vera Bradley for a sips and sweets birthday event. We had some yummy cookies and received a free gift. Saturday night Matt surprised me with dinner reservations at KAI! It's the only five star restaurant in the entire valley and only a few miles down the road from us. The restaurant is located in a hotel a couple miles off the beaten path, right in the middle of the desert. We arrived to the hostesses wishing me a happy birthday. It always makes me feel so special when people I don't know wish me a happy birthday! We waited in the lounge for our reservation time.

Our waiter was incredible! Our food was seriously delicious!! I had the buffalo and Matt went for the Elk Loin. What we thought would be one hefty main course, ended up being a five course meal! I didn't take many pictures as I felt it was too fancy of a place. There were only about 10 tables in the whole restaurant. We started with an amazing amuse bouche, followed by an assortment of breads, with a sorbet and raspberry sauce to cleanse our palette. Our main courses arrived and man oh man were they good! My buffalo fillet was on a bed of chili that was to die for! Then they brought out this desert centerpiece. 

Our waiter then poured a fancy tea over the centerpiece to release the steam. We didn't take pictures the first time so our waiter was actually so sweet and brought it out again! 

The waiter also asked what I would want for dessert and made a great executive decision! I ended up with a red velvet and beet cake over a chocolate ganache. I wasn't crazy about the beets, but the rest was amazing!!

I even had a candle to blow out!

Matt also got dessert. He had cornbread donuts and creme brulee. They were so yummy!! 

After dinner we walked around the hotel. It was beautiful!

We had such an incredible evening and felt like a million bucks. Just when we thought the night couldn't get even more special, the valet brought our car with two more bottles of water, more dessert, and a handwritten card from our waiter!

Best birthday meal ever! I am celebrating today by taking the day off work and hanging out with my friend, Jenny. We are having our sand volleyball team and neighbors over for dinner as well. See you all again soon!

Into the New Year

Hope you all had a nice weekend friends! I have a hodgepodge of pictures to share with you. Matt and I both took a few days off to celebrate the New Year. One day we used a bunch of coupons to get all this food for free! Matt was in heaven!!!

We were pretty tired out from all of our celebrating over the last month so we kept it really low key on New Years Eve. We headed over to our neighbors' house for a fun evening. They got a new game, Power Grid. We were all worried we wouldn't be able to stay awake until midnight. But that game kept us occupied for hours! 

We rang in the new year with confetti throwers and champagne.

We barely made it in time to celebrate because no one could get the champagne bottle open!!

Matt has been helping one of his relatives, Blair, build us a china hutch. It is finally finished and now nicely displaying our china in our kitchen! 

I love it so much!! Who wants to come over for a fancy dinner and cocktails?!?

I found a few more projects for Matt to work on. We have been working on cleaning out our closets in the house and moving things to the garage. The empty boxes found their way up to the attic and the extra space was filled in the garage cabinets. He also hung up our folding chairs and tables.

And built a shelf to hold more stuff.

No worries, he had fun. So much fun in fact, he felt he deserved a new tool set!

While he did that, I enjoyed a day at the new OdySea Aquarium with Jenny and Abby. We had so much fun!

At the aquarium, they built an enormous tank that allows anyone (that wants to pay for it) walk around in the water with the fish and sting rays. It looked super cool!!

We got to touch all of these things! Jenny and I were scared, and Abby just liked splashing her hands around in the water!

So many Nemos!!!!

The jellyfish tank was also really cool!

My favorite part was a ride we did towards the end of the day. It reminded me of the moving carousel at Disney World. You sit in a movie theater style auditorium, and then move around in a circle to see four or five different displays. Well instead of learning about imagination and inventions like you do at Disney, this was the place to see all the big sea animals! We started by talking to one of the divers in the first tank.

Then we moved on to see the sea turtles. They liked to stay towards the top so it was hard to get a good picture.

Then we moved over to the sea lions. They looked much more athletic than the ones we usually see lounging at La Jolla Cove!

And we ended with the sharks!

We had such a blast and ended our afternoon at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory! A perfect day!

Post Holiday Fun

The day after Christmas we were pretty exhausted. We tried doing a little shopping, but the mall was too busy for us. The next day we were much more in the shopping mood. After shopping, were stopped at my mom's favorite spot, Bahama Buck's!

While the girls shopped, the guys headed to...the moon??

Well actually just a museum in Tucson to look at a bunch of airplanes. I think everyone had a lot of fun in their respected activities. We found out the Cactus Bowl was that evening and tickets were on sale for $6! We decided we better go check it out. We got to see the Boise State band play a couple songs outside the stadium.

We grabbed a quick dinner by the stadium but made it into the game early to check everything out. 

We met some friends of my parents for the game as well.

We enjoyed watching the bands perform. Baylor had some really neat formations!

As did Boise State.

Before the game began, they opened the roof to allow several sky divers to land on the field.

They were insanely accurate!

The game began, but we spent most of our time watching for our tweet on the big screen!

Finally, in the second quarter it popped up!

They had free Raising Cane's on the back of our tickets so we headed over there after we left the game.

The next day my family left, after a slight delay. I also headed back to work. I came home early for a wedding of one of Matt's office assistants. It was such a beautiful wedding and a fun Wednesday night!

The next day was our anniversary. We were so exhausted after our busy last several weeks. We ended up ordering take out, looking at a few Christmas lights, and enjoying some wine and Christmas cookies. Such a simple night but lots of fun!