Birthdays, Valentines, and parties...oh my!

So February is a very busy month for Dave and I- we have both of our birthdays (3 days apart), my Dad's birthday, my step-sis' birthday, Dave's great-aunt and both of his grandma's birthdays, my aunt Cheryl's birthday...and of course Valentine's Day! Whew! What a month...between the celebrations, preparing for Dave's album to come out, and planning our next steps in the crazy thing called the music business...I think it's safe to say it's been a whirlwind, but so much fun!

This year for my birthday Dave planned a dinner in Kansas City the Friday before we drove up and met two of my best friends (Jen and Lindsey) at Cheesecake Factory on the plaza (plus Lin's bf Jeff)...it was a fun night and some great food! I highly recommend the avocado egg rolls, SO GOOD! And the cheesecake of course was fabulous...

On my actual birthday Dave woke me up with chocolate chip pancakes in bed- they were fabulous! I did my yoga DVD (Body by Bethenny, I'm obsessed) and then we went to lunch with my Dad, Grandma, and cousin Jenny at Granite City...later we stopped by my Mom's house to get my present from them (a chocolate facial- yes please!)...we then headed home and had a marathon of old Grey's Anatomy episodes on Netflix. I had the perfect relaxing day :)

3 days later it was Dave's birthday! His birthday was on a Wed. this year and Mon-Wed that week WSU had snow days (lucky!) I brought him chocolate chip banana muffins in bed. For lunch he wanted to go to Adrian's (a Mediterranean restaurant here in Wichita), but sadly they were closed...so we tried the new Cafe Maurice and it was fab.

When we got home Dave played Call of Duty (he was super excited because he never gets to play) and I freaked out while waiting for the mail...to back track a little bit, for those of you that don't know, I did a "card shower" for Dave this year. I asked friends/family to send cards/letters with their fav memories/pics/etc. I had been obsessively checking the mail every day for weeks leading up to his birthday and hiding away cards. Since our mailman doesn't come until later in the afternoon and I knew some more cards would be coming that day I was trying to wait until then to give him the stack, but like I said I spent part of the afternoon freaking out and obsessively checking all social medias to make sure no one spoiled the surprise...so it was a relief when the mailman came and Dave still had NO idea what I was up to.

Thanks again to everyone who sent a card and pics, he loved it and was so surprised! For dinner we made ahi tuna and veggies...I let Dave pick any movie he wanted to watch (there are a few he's been begging me to watch for awhile now and I'm never quite ready) and he chose Superman (Christopher Reeves style.) Besides being uber cheesy in some parts (hey it was the 70's), it was really good, and I agree that Christopher Reeves made the best Superman...

 

For Valentine's Day we had lunch at Zen Vegetarian, one of our favs here in town, to avoid the dinner rush. Dave and I ended up getting the same card for each other, haha! Guess great minds DO think alike ;) ...we even underlined most of the same words.

For dinner we wanted to make something together, our new twitter friend @Maria_Manning had posted a picture of a nacho casserole she made the night before and it looked so yummy I had to get the recipe...we ended up making that for our Valentine's Day meal and I made mock-a-mole from Bethenny Frankel's book "Naturally Thin" (LOVE her!) They both ended up tasting great and were easy to make. Then I surprised Dave and made a brownie in a heart pan my Mom had let me borrow, MMM! I used Ghiradelli dark chocolate brownie mix and I definitely recommend it...to die for...

The card my Mom made us :)

On the 23rd Dave got to sing the National Anthem at the new Intrust Bank Arena for the Thunder hockey game. They had a middle school color guard go out with him and post the flag (they were so cute), and we got to go up and check out the sound booth (good thing I'm not afraid of heights)...we had fun and are excited he gets the opportunity to do it again the 25th of March!

February was a lot of fun, but it's been nice to have more time to relax these past few weeks, and beat Dave at chinese checkers ;) Especially since we know that in a week or two things are going to get crazy again...