Birthday Week

My birthday week started last Friday with a great lunch with my mom and grandma. My mom gave me all her Halloween decorations and costume things from years ago. It was fun to go through the boxes and see things from my childhood. I'll have to post pictures of the cute little costumes we wore as kids.

Doug surprised me with a birthday dinner on Monday evening. He kept asking me questions that didn't make a lot of sense until Ben and Breanna showed up for dinner. It was a great surprise. It was weird though because I was cooking dinner and I heard our front security door and then heard our door open and I just about lost my mind as a dark shadow entered our home. My initial thought was, "So much for this freakin' security door!!" Then Ben yelled HAPPY BIRTHDAY APE! I told him he almost had a knife thrown at him. HAHA Breanna made me a cake that ened up melting and getting gooey, but no matter what a cake looks like it can always taste great! :) This is before it got too melted:After the trip to our house and more melting:Ben really celebrated my birthday by shaking the parmesan cheese with the lid open. HAHAMy desk was decorated on Tueday. It was so cute!There was a monster theme with bags of treats, hats, streamers, ballons, etc.Doug bought me flowers and we went to dinner at PF Chang's on Tuesday. If I took a picture using the indoor setting and moved the camera quickly it would smear the image. It was kinda fun.We had a giant horse staring at us the whole time during dinner. It was a delicious dinner and the fantastic service made it even better. A fun thing for me to do is to ask for a manager on the way out of a restaurant. The manager always gets this "oh crap" look on their face (that's the fun part hee hee), but when you end up giving his staff praise and compliments they get SO excited.

The events of the week became very sad when Brian died on Wednesday, but Doug's family is so sweet that they said at least Brian gave Denise and me our birthdays. (Doug's sister and I share the same birthday). I made a birthday shrine on our kitchen table.

This cute little mermaid picture will forever hold a place in my heart:

Lydia colored this picture for me as a gift for my birthday and she gave it to me the day her daddy died. At the time she didn't know Brian had passed away and she lit up with excitement to give it to me. Doug and I were visiting with Bonnie's mom and Caleb and Aaron got home from school while we were there. It was so hard to see their sweet, smiling faces come running into the house. My heart goes out to them and Bonnie.