December has always been a crazy month for my family. I was born on December 13th and my mom's birthday is December 14th so it was always busy and expensive to celebrate birthdays and then have Christmas less than 2 weeks later. And then Payton came along and she was born on December 10th to add to the chaos. My parents were always really good at making sure we had birthday presents and totally separate Christmas presents which I was glad for since I know a lot of December babies get combo gifts. But I love having my birthday in December! It is the most magical time of the year and so beautiful! This year, the birthday week was even crazier than normal because Greg's best friend Mike got married on my birthday. I had one more vacation day to use before the year was up and Greg didn't have classes on the 12th so we decided that I would take the 12th off and we would celebrate my birthday then. The partying started Thursday night. We went to Red Robin and enjoyed delicious hamburgers and bottomless fries. Then we walked around the mall and found a used book store. We found some pretty awesome books there and it took a lot of self control not to buy a hundred books. But we found some James Bond books and we just couldn't walk away without one so we ended up buying one. We are going to read it together over the break and I can't wait!
Then we came home and got in PJs and watched The Holiday which is one of my all time favourites. Friday morning we slept in, ate a delicious breakfast made by Greg, ran a couple errands and went to the gym. We got home and got ready for the day and packed. Greg surprised me by telling me we were going to be staying at a hotel in Salt Lake that night so we wouldn't have to get up so early to be at Mike and Vanessa's sealing! I also love staying in hotels so he knew I would love it. Traffic was super bad driving to Salt Lake but we finally made it. Our friends, Shannon and Jonathan, met us downtown for dinner. They met us at our hotel and then we took one car over to the restaurant. The hotel was only a mile away from the restaurant and it took us 40 minutes in the car to get there! The traffic was insane. We could have walked and made it in half the time! But we had fun just talking and listening to music. We went to Blue Lemon for dinner and it was delicious! After that we went to see the lights at Temple Square which is always fun. We got to see the nativity which definitely put us in the Christmas spirit. We dropped Shannon and Jonathan off at their car and then we went and got ice cream. We brought it back to the hotel and enjoyed the great view while eating our ice cream.
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| The great card Shannon and Jonathan texted to us. There is a whole, great back story with this but this basically sums up our friendship I think |
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| The view from the hotel |
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| My delicious steak at Blue Lemon |
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| Haha we asked this couple to take a picture of the 4 of us and they took one of themselves, love it! |
We were so in love with the view from our hotel from way up on the 9th floor that we made a huge mistake. We only closed the inside curtain on the window when we went to sleep. I got a good 4 1/2-5 hours of sleep before being woken up by the noise of the street because the thick curtain wasn't closed. And Greg got only a little bit more sleep than that because he was woken up by the light. I closed the dark curtain but I was already awake at that point. So we just got up and got ready to go to the Temple. It was so great to be there to see Mike and Vanessa be sealed! We are so excited for them! It was a great way to start my birthday off. When they came out of the temple it was pouring rain so I didn't get many pictures, and the ones I did get weren't great but I like them anyway.
After the temple, we had some time to kill before going to their luncheon so we just went and grabbed a snack at the Nauvoo Cafe. Then we went to the luncheon where they had Zupa's cater. After being at the luncheon for a little, we left to meet my family at the mall. They took us for milkshakes and fries at one of the places in the mall. We walked around for a bit and had a blast. Then we went to their car and they gave me my birthday presents. Payton just turned 14 on the 10th and that is the age she could start wearing make up. She looked so much older when we saw her! She is so great!
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| Can you tell we're sisters? |
After opening presents it was time to head back for the reception. The reception was beautiful and Mike and Vanessa looked so happy! We saw so many friends and it was great to catch up with everyone. Shannon, Jonathan, Tim, Sarah, Greg, and I so badly wanted to prank Mike at his hotel room for all the pranks he pulled on all of us on our wedding nights. But he wouldn't tell us where they were staying and no one else seemed to know. Tim came up with a seemingly perfect plan of how to find out where they were staying. He turned his tracker on on his iPhone and then used Jonathan's phone to track it. We were able to get Tim's phone in Mike's car but we lost them... We failed miserably but it was fun. I'm just bummed we couldn't get Mike back!
Tonight we had a big family dinner at my grandparent's house to celebrate the three December birthdays. My parents, Payton, Grandma and Granpa, my cousin Jacoby and his girlfriend, Hannah, and my second cousin, Tanner and his wife, Robin were all there. Grandma made delicious roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, Yorkshire pudding, asparagus, and 2 kinds of cheesecake for dessert. It has been a great food weekend for me. We always have such a great time when we are all together. I love my family!
I am so blessed to have such an amazing family and the sweetest husband ever. I am so grateful for all the great memories we are making!
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