Birthday Palooza!!!

Those that know me know that I LOVE my birthday!!!  Always have, and even though the years keep climbing up (perhaps I will just say I'm 16 like my grandmother did), I still love to celebrate! This marked the #29 Birthday.  I am not 30 like my father originally thought and proceeded to do the math on his church bulletin and figure out that he was a year off.  This year for me was all about food!!! I didn't really desire any particular gifts, just wanted some $ to go shopping with, which was easy for everyone.  Usually, I go out with some of my close friends to do something, and I didn't even decide to go play putt-putt until after I had picked out all the food I wanted to eat!  My thought was if calories don't count (which for one's birthday they shouldn't), then I was going to live it up!!
     Rather than just do all the celebrating on just one day, I like to extend it as long as I can.  I attempted a month long party this year, but probably actually got about 5 days this year.  Not too shabby!!!  Thursday started it off with lunch at Romano's on West Gray with my lovely coworkers.  Their lasagna is seriously to die for!  Friday went to the Rodeo with some spectacular friends and indulged in some cookie dough ice cream!  Saturday morning, Casey took me to Shipley's to get their donut holes (I love these things, but I try to be behave and not partake in them too often).

Lunch at Goode Co. BBQ to see a sweet friend in town from California for the weekend, and then dinner at BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse.  At BJ's, I had their wonderful pizza and of course a pazookie (warm cookie with vanilla ice cream on top, absolutely delicious). Burned off all those calories playing putt-putt at Mountasia (I'd like to think I did, so let's just go with that rationale for now).  Sunday, Sunday, Sunday was the actual birthday and also St.Patty's Day!! Yay!!!  Better have worn some green people!

     Went to church followed by lunch at Cheddar's with my fam and one of my besties Melissa (who we call family whether she likes it or not!)  After all that eating and partying I was able to squeeze a short nap into the day before going to a baby shower at church.  Church again and then Casey took me to the Cheesecake Factory (wahoo!!!) where I proceeded to consume my personal favorite (and immensely unhealthy) orange chicken with some dulce de leche cheesecake for dessert.  As if your mouth wasn't foaming enough by this point, I'm still not done!  Monday we celebrated with Casey's family and my mother in-law made her delicious lasagna,salad, fruit, garlic bread, and the beloved Great American Cookie Cake!!!  After all that eating, I was too scared to step on the scale to see what I weighed and still have yet to do it.  I'm sure after celebrating my sister's birthday Saturday with cake and ice cream too, that I will definitely have lost some weight!

     Totally forgot to mention that my entire birthday celebration weekend, I had a sick husband:( Boo!!!  Poor guy felt pretty puny and felt bad that the timing of his sickness was horrible, but he was trooper and tried to do almost all of my birthday festivities with me!  I thought it was just allergies since the pollen count is ridiculous now, but turns out the boy had a sinus infection and missed 3 days of work!  Monday he gets to go get allergy tested!! What fun!!
    All in all the birthday was an extreme success filled with lots of food, family, friends, and fellowship! Couldn't think of a better way to spend it!!

"For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding."  Proverbs 2:1

Valentine's Day 2013 as Mr. & Mrs.

Mr. & Mrs. Hixon Valentine's Day 2013

I know it's March (already?!), so my post on Valentine's is a couple weeks behind.   By this point, no one else is doing posts about it so this will be fresh reading!  If you're tired of V Day posts, then perhaps skip this one even though I think it's worth your reading pleasure.  In an attempt to become lower maintenance and make it easier for Casey, I told him he really didn't have to do much (yes, even though it was our first Valentine's as married folk).  It was on a Thursday and it was really busy at work still, so I wasn't going to want to do too much.  Even though I LOVE flowers,I told him he could skip that or just get them for me the following week when they would go back to being their usual price instead of double.   I'm smart floral industry, I won't let you have double my money!
     We agreed not to get each other anything big because we would go in together to buy a nice camera.  So gift is taken care of, gave him a pass on the flowers, my only request was that he get me a card and that he would read more than one.  He (along with my father) claim they have this "gift" where they can pick out the perfect card on the first try.  I personally think that is a lie, and they just despise reading more than one that they just buy the first one they pick up without really putting too much effort into it at all.  I'm ALL about thoughtfulness and effort when trying to show my love/appreciation/gratitude to someone, and I just would like the same done for me sometimes.  I tell Casey it doesn't have to be expensive, I just like to see you put thought and effort into it, and that is a huge part of the gift to me.
     Thought I forgot about food right?  Never!  All I wanted for dinner was not to cook, so either Casey could do something at home or we'd go out.  Casey got us a reservation at our favorite hibachi place by our house.  For Casey, I got him a card and made him his favorite dessert: yellow cake with chocolate icing!  I had bought a shamrock/four leaf clover shaped cake pan last year, so I made it in that and wrote on it "SO LUCKY TO BE YOUR WIFE".  He loved it! 

Yummy food!!!!

Look at that ginormous mountain of butter!  Thankfully our chef did not use nearly all of that, but I'm sure I got way more than I needed!

My handsome date!

    If you remember, V-Day was kind of chilly this year (at least in my opinion, but I'm very cold natured).  Casey and I left work at the same time, which is not unusual, but when I opened the door to his truck (that I drive Mondays, Tuesdays, & Thursdays to save gas $$$) this is the lovely (and THOUGHTFUL!) surprise my husband gave me:

The boy did SO GOOD!!!  What a sweet husband!  And yes, the balloon is HUGE!!  It is still full of helium and floating strong in our house after almost 3 weeks.  Here is what it looked like all arranged:

The card he got for me was perfect!!  The boy said he read 18 cards!  I wasn't thinking he'd go to that extreme, I was just hoping he's read like 3 or 4.  His startling revelation after doing this was that they each say something different!  Who would have thought:)  I know everyone enjoyed our very candid shot at the top of this post, so I will leave you with the outtakes that are equally humorous and I promise I am not trying to slap his head!

 

Despite a busy work day, this Valentine's was a definite success and so blessed to have such a great husband!  Have a very blessed week my blog readers and remember to join in on the month long celebration of my birthday!! Countdown is 13 days!!!

 "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:4