So I peed on a stick.......: Birthday Weeked

I am sad my birthday weekend is over as it was sure fun while it lasted. I had a lovely mini getaway with Blake on friday night in a local hotel. We had the most wonderful dinner ever at San Shi Go that pretty much blew our minds. So much fresh fish and a huge bottle of my favorite Nigori sake. It was fun to sit for a long dinner and not have to worry about being anywhere. When I was checking in the hotel the guy at the front desk noticed that we lived close so he asked if we were having work done on the house. When I told him it was my birthday he asked me what type of wine I liked so when we came back from dinner there were crackers, cheese, a bottle of wine, and chocolate covered strawberries. AMAZING! Then when I walked further in the room I noticed another bottle of my favorite wine La Crema with a note from my friends Ashley and Steve who live in NY. How sweet is that? Sadly I did get to open that bottle since the sake was making me pretty tipsy already but you can bet I will be polishing off that bad boy this week! In the morning we stopped by to say a quick hello to Olive before her nap and then went off to breakfast. We finished the day xmas tree shopping. As much as I wanted a fresh yummy smelling tree we bit the bullet and got a fakie. I swore I would never do it but it just seemed to make sense since we have the storage and it's not as messy. Who has time to vaccum every day with a toddler running around? I'm happy with it and it looks really pretty in the house. It's plenty big to grow with the collection of ornaments we have that continues to grow every year. We spent the evening decorating the tree and cooking dinner. As soon as I opened the ornament box Olive grabbed a cookie cutter (not idea why those are with my ornaments) and walked right up to the tree and tossed it on like she knew just what she was doing. It was hysterical and really strange at the same time. She attempted a few more ornaments and ended up breaking a few (thank you super glue) but for the most part has been really good about the tree. We put everything out of reach for her except for the 3 cookies cutters that she randomly takes off and puts back on throughout the day. Luckily she has no interest in trying to pull down the tree........yet.

Today turned out to be a really fun kinda random day. We headed over to the Orange Circle and discovered they were getting ready for their xmas lighting ceremony that evening. All the streets were blocked off but we caught it in the morning where it was still really empty. We wandered around and decided to get some lunch. Olive had her first diner like grilled cheese and seemed very pleased. We had dinner plans that fell through so we decided that after Olive's nap we would go back to the Orange Circle and get her photo with Santa Claus and watch the tree lighting ceremony. I thought it would be nice to have a family photo with Santa and I was sure Olive wouldn't cry since we were there but she was not happy. As soon as we were next up in line she started this fake cry thing which turned into a full on meltdown when we sat on Santa's lap. It made for a cute photo and I'm sure next year she will be chatting Santa's ear off so I'll enjoy the cute tears for now. We ate dinner at another of our favorite dinner spots which is usually only reserved for special nights so it was a real treat. We saw the pretty tree then headed home. Good good weekend.
*again the photos are out of order. boooo