The Big “2.6.”…… ew.

What a year, quite a celebration and one grateful girl!

Ok, two grateful girls!     

I got so lucky this year because Billy waited until after my birthday weekend to fly back to Phili AND my amazing mama and daddy brought him to me to join in the festivities!

Billy and Mama added to Lous decorations and surprised me with balloons, more banners and many presents when I got home from work….

26 and still sooo spoiled on my birthday… I love it!

We made MANY last minute decisions on the big birthday weekend, the only thing that was actually planned was Saturday going to the Deuling piano tapas bar … until we found out you have to make reservations 2 weeks ahead of time… I hate Atlanta!

( Good news is since I still REALLY wanted to go, I took moms advice and we made reservations for next Friday! So excited!)

Anyway, so night one of celebrating after work we opted for Chow Baby… they have the best mojitos!!

and endless amounts of food!        Then it was the best part of birthdays… Presents time!     OK and the cupcakes (thanks to mama)!

I was blown away with my presents, phone calls, texts and fb posts this year… Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone!!

The next morning I was ready for my absolute favorite part of Birthday weekend…

No, it’s actually not the partying, cake, shopping, attention or even getting to pick my favorite restaurants all weekend, actually it’s knowing I get to decorate my house for Christmas that weekend!

Ahhhh, I think I may have a decorating party for my birthday next year?

Getting a tree is a tradition Lou started for my birthday in college and we have continued it since…

The first year he surprised me with a tree on my birthday morning… I remember smelling it before my eyes even opened :)

Since then we have made it a tradition to pick it out together which he may regret…

Similar to when we pick out pumpkins (and several other things) I become quite the perfectionist… Lou knows he will never get away  with picking the closest, most convenient one… aka the one every one looked at and put back for some reason….. but this doesn’t stop him from trying…

Silly Lou, you know you have to dig for the good ones :)

Aren’t you glad you married someone with a good picker, yet again we found THE perfect tree!

Alex got out of decorating the tree this year, considering he would really only get in mom and I’s way anyway and he had a lot of yard work to do :) What really go me though was Tuckers lack of interest in decorating the tree this year… He usually loves helping me decorate the tree and this year I had to bribe him to even sit in the room to watch me do it…

(FYI: not sure which one of us is more codependent of each other, but yes, I realize Tuck and I are pathetic)

I love my little man.

Milly tried to fill in for him this year and seem interested but she only lasted about 10 seconds and was over it…

The good news is that I realized after talking to Alex, is that Tuck had been watching Alex in the yard the entire time we were decorating the tree….

This is a good thing just so ya know, it means he actually ISN’T too old to find decorating the tree with mom more fun, it’s just that his dad was doing something MORE fun…. and I can handle that :)

He loves his mom but he is ALL boy and the yard is his territory!

While decorating the inside is MINE! 

This year I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go with Birthday decorations or Christmas for Saturday night… so we called it Bipolar and did both!

Saturday was the night we had planned to go to Red Sky, but with it being booked our last minute decision night # 2 ended up being Ormsbys.. the birthday place!

The 3 Atlanta girlies left standing, we missed you Kayla!!

Pretzels, wine and Andys flask… life is good!

I attempted to order a Mojito this night as well, but as soon as an orange champagne glass came out I realized I accidently said Mimosa…. I hate when i do that!

Yes, it has happened more than once!

Always safe with Pinot… and pretzels :)

My 2 favorite boys besides Tuck :)

Yay for darts, the only game Liz and I didn’t get kicked out of!

Birthday success!     Sunday I had to get my shopping fix in for the week, ok maybe just for the weekend!

I had recently explained Pinterest to Alex as free shopping since I get a feeling of fulfillment when “pinning” things to my boards as if I own them…

(Click here to see my pinterest boards)

Except for the “DIY”, sometimes ya have to buy supplies before you actually “do it yourself”… right?

Luckily I found these glass vases for 3.99 at World Market and they were the exact shape I was looking for to copy this idea I found on Pinterest: Christmas tree branches and cranberries floating in water!

DIY success!

Next DIY, I want to cut our wedding invitation into strips and put them into a clear glass ball ornament :)

Oh yes, and you do know that as part of my birthday weekend I demanded my family go on a “Griswald family Christmas shopping event right!?! All were promised their favorite meal after participating if they were good :)

For mom, dad Alex and I that was Mexican and for Billy that meant brining along his SOUL VEGETARIAN!

You didn’t think we would let him come all the way to Georgia and not eat Soul Vegetarian did you?!?!?!

SO that was my birthday this year, are you exhausted?

I am…. and so is Mills, we’re off to bed!

Ohh yes and Happy 60th Birthday today Mrs. Karen, we hope it was amazing and that you spent every minute doing what you love! We miss you very much!! 

Pico De Gallo and a “whoops” video!

As promised here’s the super easy and oh so fresh “recipe” if you can even call it that, for Pico De Gallo!

Ingredients: As much cilantro as you prefer (no stems)

Dice up 3 tomatoes

… and half of a big sweet onion

add salt and pepper and its already done!

After we got back from Mexico last summer Alex fell in love with “fresh” pico and now he’s hooked!

I’m not big on veggies but love the smell of it!

Also this was a video from a few weeks ago that I forgot to share!

You will probably find it pretty humorous:

I’m such a klutz!! I can so see myself as that annoying mom running around asking my kids to smile for the camera in everything they do while making a fool of myself by knocking down ironing boards…. that have my “nice” camera on them!

Hope you all are enjoying your Sunday, we are pretending to be  Tara’s personal shopper today… by test driving a car for her before she comes up here to see me hopefully  buy it Wednesday.

I’m hoping that we can sneak away to Piedmont Park for the Dogwood Festival for a bit today too!

Happy Sunday!

Comps Down…..

Whew*

Today was rough… 2 in a half weeks ago our class was told we would be taking the comprehensive exam today which was over every class over the last two years (16)…… and you need a 70 or better to graduate.

Let’s just saw Kennesaw’s wanna be social workers alone has kept Cuppy’s Coffee House (best place to study in Kennesaw) open and profiting over the last 2 weeks!!

The weather has also been teasing me in to bringing my study supplies outside… but i usually spent more time dodging the branches that block me from getting any sun than i did studying!

Well that or Milly decides to play with her babies!

Anyway, last weekend (when I wasn’t at Cuppy’s) I played with my sister who was again, in town!! (YAY)

She was being classy and what not trying to stay at the RITZ*

So Alex and I pull up in the old Mountaineer (classiest car in the family) and do it up as we always do when trying to blend in somewhere we don’t belong….

Well not really, for some reason Alex loves to make sure people know he does not “fit”, maybe it’s from his days growing up with Andrew B. (his childhood friend and neighbor in Hilton Head who had more money than God). Growing up Andrew and Alex would go with Andrews parents to the nicest places and always act a fool and usually get kicked out of wherever they were!

Andrew is one of the greatest guys ever and is also the humble kid who grows up with money so he just could care less about impressing others (which i love)…. and even though Alex did not grow up with money they were together so much that the care less about impressing others part still rubbed off on to Alex from Andrew I guess!

It’s a cute arrangement though, kind of like I “won” and got a humble guy who knows what life could be like with money except never exactly “had it” to fall back on….. Instead he knows how hard people work to get “there” and how nice it will be one day to reap the rewards of his own success.

Well that was a rant in left field.

Moral of story: Best case scenario is to raise your kids with very little money but allow them to be teased by experiencing the greater things in life through a neighbor ;)

*Or be in the slim minority group of parents who have a ton of money and still manage to raise their kids to be so sweet and humble- like Tara’s friend (who hooked her up at the Ritz) and Andrew!

Back to our weekend, Tara gave us a tour of the Ritz and the pool area was so pretty… They had projectors set up and popcorn buckets out for people to eat and watch a movie earlier that night…. Tara and I decided Lou needed to take the popcorn and free bottled water since we were paying1$ per 15 minutes to park!!

Saturday was pretty eventful as well, We picked Tara up again -Ritz in the mountaineer :) …You know she loved walking out to get in that beast next to all the valet (ers)! I had a few errands to run and thought i could take time away from studying for us to do them together…can you constitute shopping as an “errand” ? I did need to go to Ulta and the damn (not my favorite) Lenox mall…only for one store!

Well sounds simple, no, not in Atlanta on a Saturday, it resulted in no parking spots at Lenox, so we parked in a near by shopping center only to return 1 hour later with a boot on my car and an asshole ready to collect 75$ and called my husband a D*head.

Scammers… let’s just say there was quite a site to see in the parking lot, for those of you who know Alex’s history with Hilton Head security guards, times that by 3!

Sunday when I got home from Cuppys Alex was planting grass and looking very handsome might I add :)

Cutie patootie*   

Oh yes and we babysat Chelsea this weekend, she loved getting her sunshine in! 

Ohh and look at this, I took a picture of this same view in November when we moved in, pretty to see how different the trees look now!

April 2011

November 2010

Anyway, the pups have gotten bored with our back porch lately because their mom has not had time to go to home depot to buy any bird seed in the last 2 weeks!

So they have channeled their hunting tendencies to the front yard for now, which means they migrated to the guest bedroom AND on to the bed for the best view of course- which is most commonly used as our folding table since it used to be the only place in the house clean of dog hair.

There that went.

How can you resist that sweetness though, (put a big check by “Dogs rule the house”).

I know I have a million and one pictures like this but I can never resist them…. Hope asked me this past weekend if our dogs really let us cuddle them the way pictures show with Alex sleeping on them all the time…..

They sure do…. and trust me it makes life very tough…. especially in the mornings when they give out their best cuddles and kisses and you have to get up and go to work!

Enough for now, Rachels Birthday is this Saturday (we aren’t officially celebrating until next weekend) but we are all going to Lake Lanier This weekend to do 14 (yes 14) zip Lines through the lake and trees?!??!!?!?

Can we say ski lift nightmare all over again!!?!?!