Golden Birthday Weekend

I turned 29 on the 29th this year. Everyone tells me that when you turn the same age as the date of your birthday it's called a "Golden Birthday". Kinda cool. My last year of being in my 20's (that's a little weird saying out loud).

Sunday the 21st was the day that the Smith's celebrated my birthday. Heidi left for a cruise with her brother Christian on the 27th, so she wanted to make sure I got a special day before she left. I forgot to have pictures taken that day, but know that it was very nice. They are always so good to me. Heidi made my favorite meal (Salmon and veggies), we played games and practiced our Christmas Eve Eve caroling. It was a great evening. I love my second Family.

The following Sunday (28th) was my very last Relief Society Lesson I would be teaching. Sad day. I have really enjoyed being a RS teacher. But I have been doing it for 2 years and I guess they usually only have the teachers teach for only 1 year. So I was blessed to get an extra year.

Being it my last lesson I wanted to give the sisters a small token of my love. My lesson was about the Second Coming, so I decided to pull the parable of the 10 virgins into it. And I gave out a vial of oil to each of the sisters to remind them to keep them oil of "conversion" full and their lamps of "testimony" burning so they may be ready for the "Bridegroom" to come.

Now that I won't be teaching anymore, I'm anxious to find out what my next calling will be.

That evening I went over to my parents to celebrate my birthday. Jesse had to go to work that morning, so he couldn't be there that night. But he had the day of my birthday off, so I'll take it. :)

Everyone was so generous and sweet with their gifts.

My mom had made a German Chocolate cake for me. She went to get the candles from the cupboard and discovered she didn't have any. So I pretended to blow out my birthday candles. I'll have to wait till next year to blow out 30 of them. EEK.

For Christmas Day, my mom had asked me to come up with an activity for the family. I thought making gingerbread houses would be fun. But the day didn't provide enough time for us to do it, so we decided to make them at my birthday. Chan turned on Disney Pandora and we all sang our hearts out to all the Disney songs. And we all were laughing how we were struggling keeping our gingerbread house from falling over (or if you're Tyson, your house just caved in).

Cy and I joined up to make one, but he was more interested in eating the candy instead of putting it on the house.

The next morning (my actual birthday) Jesse came home from work with these in hand. Such a sweetheart. I just love him.

 That morning I went to the gym, then the rest of the day I spent it grocery shopping, and just taking it easy. That night Jesse had plans for us. He didn't tell me where we were going. All I knew was there was dinner involved at 8:30pm and we were leaving at 6:00pm. So I needed to take a little snack with me to hold me over until our dinner reservations.

Alexa came over to the house to watch the boys for us. Which was so nice of her. We love her and grateful for her help so we could go out.

To switch things up a bit Jesse took me to an IMAX  3D short film at the Clark Planetarium. It was fun to see something different. I love his way of trying to make things different and special.

After the movie we drove to our dinner. I had no idea where we were going. I tried to guess, but I was totally wrong. We just kept driving. And I think he took a random way to throw me off. But I loved that he was being mysterious about it and trying to surprise me. It's romantic and cute.

Might I interject that it was a very cold night. Remembering me saying that this December has been a warm one? Well ever since our Christmas Day snow storm it's been getting colder and colder. And we could tell on this night that there was a storm blowing in. As Jesse got near Millcreek Canyon and we started driving up it, we just watched the temperature start to drop. It was so windy too that we could see all the powered snow blowing across the road.

When we reached the top, we pulled up to the Log Haven Restaurant. I had never been to this restaurant before, but I was excited to try something new and to spend it with Jesse.

We walk in and they seat us at our table that was right by the open fireplace. Mmm. So cozy. I loved it because we could still look out the windows at the snow covered pine trees and still be toasty warm by the fire.

Everything was perfect.

After we ate a delicious meal together, enjoying each others company, we drove to 7eleven to get some Hot Chocolate. It was so cold that it sounded to good.

I loved our little romantic evening together. Once again Jesse spoiled me. I'm such a lucky girl. We were talking about how he's been with me for 10 birthdays now. 10 years? That's just crazy talk. 10 years of birthdays together? It's so weird and so cool at the same time. But what I will say is that they have been the best birthdays. Year after year he always makes me feel very special.