Celebrating Life:

So this week has been birthday week for our family of 2--Jared's birthday on Monday and mine yesterday. My parents left town on Tuesday to spend the week with my brother and his family, so we decided to celebrate with them on Sunday (which worked perfectly with my plan of celebrating my birthday for as many days as possible). Jared and I went on a great bikeride Sunday morning after attending 1st service at church--the weather was awesome! When my parents got back from church (side note, Jared and I finally took down mom and dad's christmas lights while they were gone...we didn't want to be that house anymore), we decided to go to lunch downtown at a new place we hadn't tried called the Steelhead Grill. It was fantastic food, and we decided that Jared and I want to live there we love the decor so much. Anyways, we then decided to try to find a place for dessert and drove way south, went by a golf course that had a driving range right into this lake, and we decided we needed to get our golf swing on since dad had his clubs in the trunk! After some nice hits--especially by mom--we continued our venture for dessert which led us to the Davenport hotel downtown---it was awesome AND they gave Jared and I our dessert for free since it was our b-day-NO ONE does that anymore, so we were especially appreciative.
On the way home we stopped at Auntie' Bookstore to browse around for a while--upstairs there was a live band playing, and they played the theme song from O Brother Where Art Thou, which I love for some odd reason.
After heading home, we all went off to workout together at Anytime Fitness since Jared and I had a free week's pass and made it home in time to watch Amazing Race together! We had a fantastic time with them!

On Monday I wanted to do something special for Jared, so immediately after I got out of my subbing job, I went to Just American Desserts and picked up a white chocolate cheesecake for Jared, along with a picnic dinner of his favorite things. When he arrived home, we hopped in the car and went down to Riverside state park where we walked around, ate our dinner, and just enjoyed spending time together.

Yesterday I had to open at work, and then decided I should not have to do my own hair on my birthday, so I got it cut, and when I came home my fabulous now 26 year old husband had a beautiful bouquet of flowers waiting on the counter for me:) We met up for lunch later on during the day and I went to youth group last night while he was in class--maybe not the most eventful birthday ever, but still great.

Saturday we are having a big LOST party here at the house-I don't even remember the last time I had a birthday party!! It's strange how every year older I get, the more aware I become of who I'm allowing the Lord to make me. My prayer this year is that through all of my life experiences, that the Lord would increase in me and I would decrease. I'm so thankful for all of our family and friends who either called us or gave us a card, or were just kind and thoughtful to us as we celebrate this week. We are so blessed!
~Angela M.