Celebrations and Thank Yous

 Well hello there, blog world. 

I understand some of you may even be waking up to snow this very fine Monday morning of President's Day. Me? I woke up to my regular alarm at 5:40, because my cell phone forgot today is a holiday. No biggie, I turned that baby off and slept until 7, which as any of us teachers know, is late! 

Hmm okay, so this blog was neglected since January - well it's February now and guess what? I'm 30! I guess 30 doesn't come with any better promises to write blog posts daily. 

What 30 does come with is realizations. I celebrated my birthday in a very low-key fashion. We went to dinner the night before (cause the actual day was on a Sunday, making it a little harder for us teachers to go out at night). I had my parents, my brother and favorite J, and of course my beautiful niece. I also had 6 amazing friends there. Of those 6 friends, 2 I have known my entire life, and the others basically since I was 12. What I've come to realize is, it really is the ones who have known you the longest (at least for me) who will always be there. Things change, people get married (as almost every other person at that table besides me was), and people have babies (1 couple at the table has a 9 month old and another is pregnant), but when we can actually take an hour and a half or 2 hours out of our day and spend it with one another there is no greater feeling. 

The actual day of my birthday all I wanted was pancakes. Where'd I ask my parents to meet me? IHOP. 

The waitress even had everyone sing to me and brought me a birthday dessert. Plus, the radio station was there giving out prizes and they played that game - what's in your purse. I won for having a magnet in my purse - my teacher name tag! So I got a Blu-Ray DVD of Phantom of the Opera. I don't have a Blu-Ray player, but oh well. Maybe one day. 

It was also a lot of fun celebrating at school. There are two teachers I am close with and all three of us have February birthdays) in fact two of us share the same birthday. So all the fun began on the 3rd when it was our friend's birthday. She likes to celebrate with her kids, and that we did - she wanted a Justin Bieber birthday and we had the most purplicious day ever. Plus, it was Braves Day at our school! 

Then the following Friday began the celebrations for the 2 of us. We returned Monday to school only to begin our Secret Sweetheart exchange. Anyone in the school can sign up and we leave little treats all week long, and then Thursday afternoon we had the big reveal. I left my secret sweetheart things like peanut butter M&M's, skittles, a cute clipboard, and a coupon to read to her kids for 20 minutes while she takes a break. My big gift to her was a gift card to Erin Condren. 

I hope everyone likes a gift like that because it is also what I got my blog exchange partner over at Third Grade First State. 

Now my blog exchange partner who had me - she did AMAZING. I thought she knew me it was unreal. Kim had me, and from what I can tell, her blog is Growing up Teaching. On my actual birthday I got an e-gift card from her to go shop at Oriental Trading. How fun is that?! At first I forgot all about the whole blog exchange thing ad was like what is this and who is it from?! Then I was just overwhelmed by the sentiment. Then Monday (the day after my birthday and the day before Valentine's) I came home from a very long day only to find a package from amazon waiting for me. Kim got me this: 

Umm YAY! Did anyone see my birthday cupcakes in the first picture in this post?! I love cupcakes. I am the cupcake queen. I even had to give my mom my cookbooks for my birthday dessert cause I wasn't about to make my own cupcakes. How did she know?! AND it comes with a pastry bag and tips - like good ones, not oh here's a Ziploc now go snip a corner in it (um yeah, that's what I do). I love this. The only thing is it is too pretty to use. Ha, I have issues. 

Thank you SO very much. Now I am off to clean on the rest of this day off. Enjoy!