Happy Birthday to Me!!

And you thought we were done with the birthdays. Not quite yet! My birthday falls just a week after Alex's. He was actually due on my birthday, but I didn't want to share, so he had to come a week early.

I like spreading my birthday celebrations out over multiple days. This year everything encompassed 3 days. The day before my birthday we went out to lunch and saw the movie Wall-e. It was a really good movie. I recommend it to all.

On my actual birthday we went to the farmers' market in the morning. I set up with one of the farmers to get a weekly basket of produce. What I really wanted was part in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where you buy into a share of a farm and get weekly produce, but noone around here does that. So I had to set up my own. So now every week I'll be getting a big basket of farm fresh produce. Yum.

From there we went to the free kids movie at the movie theater. Movies will end up being the theme of this week. It's too hot out to do anything else. We saw the Veggie Tales movie. Ella and I had already seen it, but it was still fun anyways.

When we got home I decided that it was time to open my only birthday present, the one from my parents.

See how excited I am? And they got me the coolest gift, money!! But not just any money, money to buy this:

The DeLonghi 5 qt mixer!! No more hand mixing all my cakes and frostings. No more pretending I know how to knead bread. I am so excited. I got right on the internet and ordered it. There will be a baking frenzy when this pretty baby comes in the mail! Thanks mom and dad!! Oh, and my mom also gave me a framed picture of the sunset over Balboa beach. I love that place.

I actually spent the afternoon working a bit. Such a fun thing to do on my birthday, but it needed done. Then I decided to try and branch out my culinary skills. I made chicken tika masala for dinner. It turned out okay, but nowhere near as good as restaurant food. But since there are no Indian restaurants around here, homemade will have to do.

Then came the true celebration of the day. We had some friends come over, and instead of me baking my own cake, we had a fondue party!! I love fondue.

Ooey, gooey chocolatey goodness. Yum. I could eat a whole pot myself.

And look at all the fabulous treats we had to go with it!! The cherries were a last minute addition and turned out to be super fabulous.

I told Anton I didn't want a cake, but he surprised me with one anyway.

With all 18 of my candles on there. Okay, so there may have been more. But I've come to the age where you don't claim it any more. I'm old. That's all you need know.

Anton also decided to surprise me with trick candles. I blew and blew and they just wouldn't go out. I even spit on some and they still relit. Of course it didn't help that Andre kept relighting them too.

But a nice glass of water solved the candle problem and then we were all able to eat cake and ice cream in addition to the fondue. We were stuffed. But everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Ella loves chocolate.

Andre does too. The rest of us managed to contain our chocolate joys and eat with a bit of decorum. :)

After all that excitement you would think I couldn't handle any more. But the next day the celebrating continued. First, the gift Anton got me finally arrived in the mail.

He had taken all of my 2007 blog posts and published them in a book for me!! It took him a lot of time and it looks so good. I ended up being over 200 pages long. I love it.

Better reading than any novel.

And then to finish off the birthday celebrating, we got a babysitter last night and Anton and I went out on the town! We hadn't had a babysitter in soooooo long. It was great. We went to dinner at Chili's and then saw the movie Get Smart. It. was. so. funny! I haven't laughed so hard in ages. Everyone must go see that movie. Must. You won't regret it.

And that brings us to the end of my birthday celebrations. It was a good one. If it wasn't for the age I turned, I would even have said it was a great one. Happy Birthday to me!!