Birthday, New Camera & Fun!

As my last blog posting was all about, I am now thirty.  And I had a spectacular birthday!

I had a really bad day the day before my actual birthday, so Justin & the kids decided to let me open my birthday gift a day early.  (No problem here!)  The kids helped him wrap it up while I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, and they each carried wrapped boxes into the living room.  Kaylee immediately said, "Mom, it's a new camera!"  That totally cracked me up & Justin just put his head down in disbelief!  It's certainly something I'll never forget.

So, YES, Justin & the kids got me a nice new camera!  I'd been wanting one for a while, but since our Canon point & shoot was still working perfectly fine, I couldn't justify just splurging on a new one.  I had mentioned to Justin months back that I wanted a "real" camera, especially since the kids are getting older & getting involved in sports.  Well... he did a great job!  

I got a Nikon D7000 with more bells & whistles than I can even comprehend at the present moment.  It has 2 different lenses that I can swap back & forth to, depending on what kind of picture I'm wanting to take.  And ever since I opened it on Tuesday, I've been taking some fun shots:

My birthday was on Wednesday.  That night, we met up at P.F. Chang's with about 16 of our friends for a delicious meal.  We had an amazing table, right behind the bar & basically right in the kitchen!  It was so fun!

Cake time!  There's a new cake shop that opened up in Cedar Park called "Nothing Bundt Cakes" (adorable name, right?!).  I had ordered a red velvet cake from there, then switched to a lemon cake at the last minute.  (Do you see all of that delicious cream cheese frosting on there?  Oh my... DELISH!)   It did not disappoint!  Everyone loved it & I'm already looking forward to my next bundt cake from there!

After dinner, we headed downtown to watch the Spazmatics play; they are this awesome group of guys who dress up as nerds & play tons of 80's cover songs.  It is always a blast!

But before our smaller group headed downtown, we said bye to a few...

The night was fun & I was so happy to be able to spend my big day with so many of my good friends.  We are truly blessed with amazing friends...

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We're going skiing in December so I went ahead & ordered some snow boots for Kaylee.  They came in the mail on Saturday & she was one excited (and sassy) little model once she got them on...

On Saturday afternoon, we took the boat out to Lake Austin and invited along Dan, who works with Justin, and his wife & two kids.  We stopped at Ski Shores Cafe for lunch & while we were waiting for the food to arrive, I snapped this super cute pic of the kids playing on the playscape.

And the tube was certainly the hit of the day -- these 3 just couldn't get enough of it!

The rest of the weekend was great as well.

Justin had a shooting competition on Sunday morning, so while he drove to Manor for that, the kids & I went to church.  Afterwards, we came home, had lunch & then Austin had a friend over to play the rest of the afternoon while I was sewing.  Yard work last night followed by homework.  (I'm SO ready for school to be done... only 2 1/2 more weeks!)