Happy Birthday to Doug

This year's birthday festivities were great. We started the week before Doug's birthday and celebrated until the week after. I love having an excuse to celebrate something!

We started up in Idaho with Doug's family. We went up there to help get Doug's parents house ready for renters and decided it was a convenient time for the first round of birthday cake and presents. We had a great birthday dinner with Doug parents, brother Carl and his Grandma Willis.

This year's birthday cake was an encore of the Blueberry Buttermilk Tart (it's that good) and mini Raspberry Almond Tarts.


I liked this picture of Doug because somehow the candles reflected in the photo to make it look like he's blowing fire! (and yes, we do own a camera that is way beyond our photography abilities...)


The rest of the week included lots and lots of free food (I love birthday week). Our favorite is still Fuddrucker's free burger. This year's biggest birthday week disappointment: Coldstone went buy one get one free on us. Sigh.

The big day included apple turnovers for breakfast (ps- we got 'birthday plates' for the bday person to eat on and I just love them!) and a delightful assortment of Ben and Jerry's in the evening. (don't you love how my summary of celebrations include what we ate and nothing more? I know I sure do)

And now we plan to diet until the next birthday week to make up for it!

Gardening

When we first bought our house I was really surprised at the necessity of having an entire conversation's worth of information on grass ready at a moment's notice. Who knew you could talk about grass so much? But it's certainly the hot topic around the neighborhood all summer long. It makes a lot of sense really, you have to put a lot of work into having lawn here (not like in the East where your only thought is to make sure it doesn't grow out of control) so of course people will want to swap stories and tips all the time. I've learned a lot the past few years and am proud that I can almost hold my own when it comes to grass gossip.

Going with the grass talk is garden talk. And I'm happy to say that this year I can participate in that a little more. This spring Doug built us these awesome raised beds and we have had so much fun growing vegetables. These pictures are from the day we planted everything, and it's so fun to see the difference between now and then. It's just a wonderful, wonderful thing to NEED to eat fresh cilantro every couple days to keep the plant under control. Right now we're only harvesting herbs, but coming soon will be tomatoes, peppers, carrots and hopefully even a watermelon. I'm so excited.

Not Mother's Day

There are a few holidays that I've always wondered about. Isn't it weird that we devote an entire day for couples who are already happily in love to celebrate their wonderful lives, forcing everyone who isn't happy to sit and watch and feel miserable? Whose idea was THAT?

Valentine's day isn't my only complaint, as I'm sure you've put together after reading the title of this post. I'm all about giving mothers credit for all they do. In fact, I think it should happen way more than one day a year. As a childless adult, however, Mother's Day is a day I plan to happily avoid for as long as possible.

This year Laura, one of my best friends from college, came down from Portland to share in the avoidance. We spent the weekend in extreme girliness. A day at Gardner Village (including way too much time at their awesome quilt shop), a night in the cutest hotel in downtown SLC, room service for breakfast and church at the institute building at the U where no Mother's Day talks could be heard. I do believe it was the beginning of a beautiful tradition.