Birthday!

sunday was my birthday and i had such a great week{end} celebrating!

it all started last tuesday when cody mentioned that a church asked him to preach twice on sunday. this is somewhat of a normal deal & usually i am a supportive baptist wife and go with him. however, sunday was my first day to start volunteering in the nursery at our church, so i knew i couldn't go with him. so i called my parents up to see if they wanted to spend the weekend with us! {after all, no one should be alone on their special day!}

cody and i had our first celebration meal at red robin. sign up for their mailing list and you get a free burger for your birthday!



split it with someone and eat all the never ending fries you want and it makes for a rather cheap celebration! funny enough, all 3 booths that were around us at red robin were also celebrating birthdays! who know august 28 was so popular...

the rest of the week was busy with work, but i made some time to pick up the house for my parents. you can always tell if they're coming soon due to the condition of my microwave...



i scrub it till it's sparkling clean if mom's going to be in town!


while my parents were here, we finally introduced them to the goodness of lucy's burgers. for real. if you ever come to abilene, you have to get one of these burgers! they use some sort of sweet bread that is un.be.lieve.able. they also make homemade peanut butter ice cream that will rock your world!

saturday was filled with shopping, a picnic for cody's work and a delicious dinner at olive garden. my parents were super sweet and made reservations at perini ranch, which is a famous steakhouse that we're lucky enough to have in west texas, but breadsticks were calling my name.

cody put on a little show while we were there, serenading me with eric clapton.


{you look wonderful tonight}

my mom and i always split the chicken scampi. so delicious!



{my twinkie}



then we headed home for cake, ice cream and presents. only we were too full from dinner, so we started with presents. my mom used my dad's red shoe laces from his new tennis shoes to help in wrapping my present and they kept making a big deal out of the new red shoes they got me. i really thought they were just being ridiculous, but no, they really got me red shoes:


{just call me kendi}

i squealed when i opened them! i've been wanting these shoes for a while and haven't bit the bullet on them. bless my sweet husband's heart for telling my mom yes when she asked him if i would want them. i'm so excited! if you're thinking about getting them, be warned, mine are definitely coral orange, not red. like so orange that my mom spent many hours on the phone with u.o. saying they're not red. i will be taking them back to a store to see if they were mis-dyed. i'll let you know what the verdict is.

then it was time for my next gift. once again, my mom {and Bami!} hit it out of the ball park with this one!


{dishes by dayspring}

i've mentioned and showed these to my mom *several* times, but could never afford them, plus i couldn't really justify getting them since we were newlyweds and got nice stuff at our showers. it was so sad to see them on sale and know they were just out of my reach! thankfully, my mom and bami went in together to get me 8 place settings! i know i will love using these for many years to come!

bami did pull a fast one on me. she had my mom give me their card before we went to dinner. typically, we get money for our gift, but there wasn't any in my card. previously, bamps and bami did a large christmas gift for the cousins and understandably, didn't give us birthdays gifts that year. once i saw the empty card, i thought they must have started another no birthday gift year since we got the big trip from them in june. come to find out, they did get me a gift but bami wanted to make me sweat a little bit! {before you think i'm such a good person for just assuming our trip with birthday gift enough, i did ask cody if he got a gift from b & b this year! just wanted to make sure bami wasn't loosing her mind :) }

after presents, i then treated my dad to a quick round of night golf!


{11:50 p.m.!}

we had a great time {i won!} but i did keep saying... this would be so creepy if you were out here by yourself!

all in all it was *such* a wonderful weekend and i'm so thankful that my parents were able to come down. everyone did such a great job making me feel super special!  i'm excited to see what 27 holds!