Birthday Celebrations!

Tuesday I turned 27 and it was a terrific day!  My husband, family and friends made me feel so special and loved, I am one blessed lady!  I thought I would do a little recap of all the fun we had celebrating my birthday!

Since my birthday fell on a Tuesday we decided to start the celebrations the weekend before.  Saturday we planned a brewery tour and then dinner with friends later that night.  Quick side note: Michael and I love craft beer and we really miss all the local brewery's we had in NC.  Little did we know we had one in our back yard.  Michael stumbled across a brewery here in town and we thought that would be a great way to celebrate my birthday.  Saturday afternoon we gathered our friends Laura, Zach and Ally and headed to Blue and Gray brewery for a tour and lunch.  We had a blast, got to see how they make their beers and got to taste their different beers, yum!  After our tour and tasting we headed to the restaurant they have on site and enjoyed lunch and a couple more brewskies ;).

Blue and Gray Brewery!

Making beer

Cheers Hubs!

Lovely Ladies!

Later that evening the same crew headed to Firebird's for a celebratory dinner.  After a lot of convincing my husband made me order the Filet, which my frugal/cheap butt was not wanting to do haha! I might have been looking at the burgers, then my husband made a brilliant point: if you were going to get a burger we could have went to Red Robin.  True!  I am so glad I let him convince me because man oh man was it AMAZING!  I only eat steak maybe once or twice a year and I had forgotten how delicious a good Filet could be.  After stuffing myself I was pretty much in a food coma and in true late twenties fashion we headed home and I was in bed by 10:30 haha! My how life is a changing.

Ally, Little Miss. Mikayla, Laura and I.

What? I had a glass of champagne, shocker!

Oh. My. Word.

My handsome man and I.

On my actual birthday I woke up to tons of text messages and fb messages from all my awesome friends.  I think that's my favorite part of birthdays, just so many sweet and thoughtful messages from the ones you love.

One of the messages I woke up to, oh Jordan you so crazy girl!

  That day Michael had to work so I decided to go out to lunch with my neighbor Laura who we met back in June and is fast becoming one of my new BFF's!  We hit up Chipotle and this cheapskate even splurged for guacamole, which I will inform you is $2 extra! Gasp!  I ball out on my birthday, what can I say?  After an awesome lunch with even better company we headed to Target and walked around and then I headed home to await my hubs.  We had dinner plans that evening but before we left Michael insisted I open my present before dinner.  Which I wasn't wanting to do, I am a huge surprise person! I absolutely love the anticipation of a surprise, I thinks that's why I like Christmas Eve better than Christmas day!  I finally gave in and grabbed the wrapped box and started to open it, I should have known something was up when Michael started video recording the process.  I pulled out the first thing I knew immediately what it was by the feel, a new IPHONE!!!!!  I was thrilled, back in August I might have dropped my old phone and shattered the screen but I didn't want to spend the money on the new one, have I mentioned I'm cheap?

Yay new phone! Please check out my home screen my husband cleverly loaded before hand. haha!

  I was so excited about my phone, and then Michael says "that isn't your real present open the other thing".  So I pull out the next wrapped package and it feels like a picture frame, I tear the paper and see this:

I immediately started laughing hysterical, I mean it was amazing.  I really didn't think anything of it, I just thought it was something funny and thoughtful.  I was totally prepared to put it on my bedside table and head off to dinner.  Then Michael says "you know what that's for?" Me:"No" This is when he told me that I had tickets to the Justin Timberlake concert in November and I was going with some of my best friends.  This is when I lost it, I might have even shed a tear of joy.  I was seriously hysterical.  My man seriously out did himself, and the best part was that my friends had all helped him plan this little scheme.  After I calmed myself we headed to dinner at an Italian place called bravo!  Had a delicious dinner and finished it off with a giant piece of chocolate cake! My birthday was amazing!

Birthday dinner with my man!

 Special thanks first off to my kick butt husband, babe you never cease to amaze me, and to my friends and family for making me feel so special.  27 started off great and I can't wait to see what else is in store for me this year.

We are headed home this weekend for a Wedding, I can't wait to spend time with family.  Oh yeah and fall starts Sunday! Happy Fall y'all!!!

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Summer update part dos!

Here's part two of our summer as promised.

July:

First off July 4th, we decided to stay in town for the holiday since Michael had to work the next day.  I was a little bummed we wouldn't be with family on the 4th but I decided I was going to make the best of it, which meant having our own shin dig!  We did our own cook out complete with chili dogs, potato salad and deviled eggs!!  That evening we headed Downtown to watch the fireworks. And then finished the evening back at home watching a replay of the fireworks up in D.C and eating homemade S'mores bars.

All american meal right down to the diet coke!

Little Miss waiting on the fire works to start.

Rockin my dollar glow in the dark necklace.

Fireworks!

Homemade s'mores bars.  The crust did not hold together at all so it was a big mess, but  a delicious big mess.

The week after July 4th started Michael's furlough days.  In case you are wondering what that is well basically Michael was forced to take one day a week off, I know what your thinking "that doesn't sound so bad" yeah it isn't until you get your pay check and realize 20% of it is missing. There were 11 furlough days scheduled so that meant 2 and a half months with a 20% pay cut so at first I was stressed/freaking out, but suprisingly I look back and it was such a gift.  We got an extra day together to relax and spend time together and to make things even better they shortened it to 6 days, so Michael went back to full weeks in August, we were looking forward to a full pay check again but definitely miss our long weekends together.  The first furlough friday happened to be the best day of the year, cow appreciation day at Chick Fil A.  If you guys know Michael and I you know that we have been participtaing in this day ever since we got married.  So we got all dressed up and headed down to our local CFA for some free food.  This year we doubled up and went to a different CFA for dinner, two free meals from one of my favorite restaurants in the world: SCORE!!

Moo!

Next up in July was a visit from my Mommy, I could not wait for my mom to come up and spend an entire week with us.  On the day she was coming up Michael and I had to drive about an hour away to pick up Michael's new car, well lets just say it was new to him.  Michael has been driving the Honda girl, which is my car from high school, thats right I still have my first car.  Well Honda girl has seen better days and with almsot 250,000 miles on her it was time for her to retire especially since Michael's commute is 40 miles one way.  So we decided to buy Michael a car that got good gas mileage and we could just put miles on.  It just so happened we came across a Acura integra on craigslist and we knew it would be perfect, why you ask.  Well Michael's first car was an Integra and it was a great reliable car and was still going strong at 275,000 miles when it was totaled by a drunk driver.  The icing on the cake was this Integra just happned to be black just like his old car, when we arrived to pick it up it was seriously like stepping back in time.

The Integra's back!!!!!

Like I mentioned before my Mom headed up our way that same day and arrived later that evening.  We spent the weekend eating out and just relaxing.  Of course when my mom comes she always brings goodies, my mom's love language is spoiling you and she did just that, she had two huge bags full of stuff for Michael and I, Mom your the best.  

Some of my goodies!! That Urban Decay eye shadow is DA BOMB!!!

Most of the week was spent by the pool and just relaxing, we also took Mom to Carl's for ice cream a few times and she loved it! We knew she would.  The last day she was here we headed up to D.C for a visit.  We had a blast saw lots and lots and must have walked 25 miles no lie!  It was perfect because even though it was the end of July it was in the mid 70's, it was so nice!

Carl's!!!!!!

first stop

Tomb of the unknown soldier.

My mom loves art so we made sure to stop by some of the art museums.  We headed to the National gallery and they just happend to have the Edward Munch exhibit, who is one of my mom's favorite artists so she got to see the Scream in person!!!

Museum of Modern history.

When it was time for my mom to head back to NC I tagged along and spent the following week at home with family, Michael headed down the next weekend to pick me up.  That week consisted of more quality time with family and relaxation.

If you are from Charlotte you know how amazing Showmars is, so any time I'm home I have to eat there at least once!

Bruster's Birthday cake ice cream.

Bella's handy work at my dad's.

Bella and Daisy taking a trip to Pets Mart.

Sweet Daisy Mae.

My sweet nephew James, We got to see Nicholas and James that weekend!

My loves!

August

The beginning of August was pretty uneventful, just normal life.  August 5th we celebrated 6 years since Michael and I got engaged.  We celebrated with........ yep you guessed it Champagne.

Towards the end of August Michael had to travel for software training.  Now normally that would make me sad but not this time because this training just happened to be in Raleigh!!!!! So I got to tag along and to make it even more amazing once again the amazing Will and April Davidson let us stay the entire week with them!!!!  We had such a blast we got to see April and Will's new house (which is beautiful) and got to spend a weeks worth of quality time with our best friends!!!  The first two days April was down in FL on vacation so I got the chance to spend Monday and Tuesday with Malachi their son and my little buddy.  It was so great to get to spend one on one time with him, he is absolutely perfect and I can only hope that our future children will be as easy as he was.  We did lots of playing, coloring and taking Bella on walks.

My little man!

Just walking Bella like a big boy!

We were so excited that we were able to attend bible study that week with our old small group, it was so great to be back with everyone we miss them so much!

Love these ladies!!

How cute is this, Michael, Malachi and Will.

That weekend started off with a dinner date with our friends Cory and Ricky they were our neighbors when we lived in Cary.  We miss them so much (and Bella misses her buddy Toby) we enjoyed dinner and then headed back to their place to have a skype date with Jonathan and Chenoa. The next day our small group rented a pontoon boat and we spent the entire day relaxing, eating, drinking and laughing on the lake.  It was an absolute blast!

Some of my favorite people in the world!

April, love this girl soooo much!

 Paradise

I even got to try my first cigar!  Pretty gangsta right?

That week was amazing, so great to be back with friends.  Thanks to the Davidson's for letting us crash your house for an entire week.

September:

We headed home to Charlotte for Labor day weekend.  My dad and his neighbor's always host a huge cook out where they make they're famous BBQ.  For you non-southerners when we say BBQ we mean pork.   It is amazing and we look forward to it every year.  So shockingly the only pic I have from that weekend is of my food haha.

Oh my word.

So now we are back in VA and getting back to normal life, and I am sooooo ready for fall!!!  Cool weather, everything pumpkin and FOOTBALL!!!!  It may not be cool yet but at least football is back and my life is complete!  

Go Panthers!

So that pretty much wraps up my summer update, here's to hoping I can stick with my once a week post goal.  I am going to leave you with some pics of Bella because there just was not enough in these past two posts, and she is just so darn cute!

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