my bday

yesterday was my bday. i don't even know where to start with how awesome it was. darren came home on saturday (in the wee hours of the morning). on sunday we went to the zoo with the kiddos and brianne and danielle - the babies really enjoyed the petting zoo goats.

on monday blake made me blueberry and banana waffles and bacon for breakfast. kaylee got me some see's chocolate, ethan got me flowers. we had monte cristoes at home for lunch and monday afternoon blake's parents came over and then we went out with my parents, darren, blake's parents, brianne and danielle, and the kiddos to claim jumper. dessert was not for the faint of heart - between the 11 of us (or 9, since the kiddos didn't have any), we got... one piece of mud pie, one piece of creamcheese cake, a brownie finale, and... yes that's right, a slice of the motherload cake. with a side of ice cream of course. wait, you're not familiar with claim jumper and their portion sizes? alright, here are two images (from the internet... not sure where my camera is at the moment).

that's the mud pie... too tall to fit in the picture...

(pic is from the internet, I don't actually know those people) and that's the motherload cake. it's 6 layers of chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate. yum. (but fear not, there is more chocolate to come in this story of my birthday...) we then wrapped up the evening with some game playing (dominion, ticket to ride w/ alvin & dexter, and then spot on! - spot on could have it's own post, but I won't go into it now...)

then bri and danielle spent the night and suddenly it was tuesday, my actual birthday! Blake and I woke up with the babies, handed them over to danielle for another hour while we went back to sleep (glorious), and then I headed off for an 8:00 am appt w/ the eye doctor to get my prescription checked (apparently my eyes got slightly better w/ pregnancy, although not enough better to warrant changing prescriptions). bri and danielle headed off to work, and my mom and darren came over to take the babies and blake headed off to work too. whew, this really was a marathon birthday as I'm exhausted just remembering it all.

so then I went to work, where my boss had made me banana cupcakes (delish!) and after a couple hours we headed off to one of my favorite restaurants (pogacha) for lunch w/ 6 of my coworkers. then danielle swung by the eye doc w/ me and chose some prescription sunglasses w/ me (dark purple with bling). because our lunch had run a little long I went back to work just to pick up my cupcakes and fill out my timesheet and then I raced home to pump, kiss the babies, and then brianne picked me up at 4:20 to head out to an evening of fun w/ the girls!

(see? marathon birthday here). we went to purple where we split some pizzas and salads because the girls knew we had more eating in store (this did not stop us from ordering a little creme brulee however). then they whisked me off to a secret location... which turned out to be a candy and cake shop in the back of a party store where we spent 4 hours making truffles. 36 truffles. EACH. I made 14 flavors. (the lady recommended 5-7 flavors so I started with 5 bailey's truffles, but then I got a little carried away...) let's see if I can remember all my flavors...

1. bailey's
2. raspberry
3. PB&J (half raspberry, half PB, my idea)
4. PB
5. guava
6. cheesecake
7. rasp cheesecake
8. cayenne (jackie made these for her hubby, and I just stole the filling for one for blake)
9. hazelnut
10. lemon gingerbread (danielle's creation)
11. pear
12. peppermint
13. almond (I may have over-almonded the almonds... a little scared to try these later)
14. butterscotch

ta da! I remembered them all :). all of them had dark chocolate ganache (is there another kind?), 28 had dark chocolate shells, 7 milk chocolate shells (just for variety), and then I covered them all in dark chocolate again (so you never know if you'll get a milk chocolate shell until you bite into it)! then we decorated them with sprinkles (snowflakes for peppermint, hearts for rasp, iridescent hearts for rasp cheesecake, etc), salt (on the pb&j, habanero salt on the cayenne), sugar crystals of various colors (pink and orange for guava), we drizzeled some in various designs, there were even rainbow flakes, gold flakes, gold stars...

in summary it was crazy awesome, as was my whole bday. thanks to all who celebrated with me, called, emailed, texted, facebooked, sent gifts... it was a great weekend, and I feel very well loved. thanks guys :)