My birthday

Despite all my rants about how much I hate Valentine's Day, this year's turned out to be pretty good after all. I don't recall every once not having snow on my birthday. Even when I lived in the Midwest it snowed. This year didn't let me down. It's funny to look out my window now and see the ground clear of white stuff, but it was definitely falling yesterday. Snow on my birthday has always been a nice treat for me.

On Friday at work, my friend Christina gave me flowers and a jar of pickles (I LOVE pickles!). Tomorrow morning she's taking me to breakfast.

Also on Friday, my co-workers gave me cards, which were really sweet. It's so inexpensive, but such a nice gesture. I'd recommend doing this where you work. You can make a card on the computer and print it out on stock paper. Sometimes we get so caught up in everything that we forget to say nice things to the people we work with. Having a card that everyone can sign gives people the chance to say something nice and it really does brighten up a day.

At home, we started my birthday celebration at midnight on Saturday by opening a few presents from my family. My parents gave me an old fashioned phone. The kind made with ivory and brass. When I was a kid we had one and I loved it. I've always dreamed of having one of my own, so this means a lot to me.


I think pearls are so elegant and timeless. You can wear them with anything, so I was psyched to get a set of pear earrings from my man.

At 8am, the doorbell rang and there was a beautiful flower delivery from my in-laws. It's the first time some one's ever sent me flowers on my birthday. And these look so perfect in my kitchen.

Then I made breakfast. I'm kinda excited about what I made- it was border line Martha-ish.The pictures never look as good as Martha, but here's what I made:


My whole family called to sing happy birthday to me and then I went to work to do my weekend shift. When I came home, there were more presents to open!

This card made me cry. I hate the way I look when I cry. I have the WORST cry face.

I got a gift card to my favorite store. Yea for being able to buy some new summer clothes!

And then I opened a gift to find something I'd wanted for a long time. A wireless printer that I can use with my laptop.

As we do every Valentine's Day we ordered Chinese and afterward had a yummy cheese cake!

All in all, it was a really nice Valentine birthday and I am a happy girl.


I have to say, I know a lot of people think of birthdays as nothing, but as a kid my mom blew birthdays up. I mean, she went the whole 9 yards. From huge signs hanging from the front porch to decking out the house in decorations to playing games and baking a huge cake. Birthdays were always bigger than life in my house. I think part of the reason birthdays were so huge is because 3 of us were born on holidays, me on Valentine's Day, my brother Jeff on Easter and my brother Brian on Christmas. I don't think mom ever wanted our birthdays to get lost in the shuffle of the holidays. Plus, I think she really enjoyed going all out and making our day so fun.


Yesterday, I got some emails from friends remembering past birthdays when we were kids. One of my friends is a school teacher and she told me that every year on Valentine's Day she thinks of me and of cookies. My mom had this huge heart shaped cookie cutter and every year on my birthday she'd make gigantic heart shaped cookies for all the kids in my class. Then in pink frosting, she's write out each classmate's name. Talk about dedication. A lot of friends remember those cookies.


Another friend remembered the butcher paper. Mom had a big roll of butcher paper and for each of our birthdays she'd roll out a length of it and write a message to us. Then she'd hang it from the pillars of our house. It'd stay up all day and every one who drove by knew who's birthday it was.


A couple of my friends wrote to tell me they often think of the party we had for my 16th birthday. My mom made up a list of things we had to find and then set us free in the neighborhood for a scavenger hunt. Afterward we all lined up in a row to have a squirt of whipped cream put in our mouths. I don't know how this tradition started, but in my family when it's some one's birthday, mom pulls out the whipped cream and squirts it into mouths. The thing I remember most about that birthday is that some of my friends got whipped cream on their clothes. We went outside in the snow to have a snowball fight and all came back in smelling like spoiled milk. We laughed a lot about that.


The one thing my mom has always been great at is birthdays and I hope that one day I'll be as good as she is with my own kids.