Birthday Week!

So this week was an exciting week filled with travel, friends, and family.  This Monday I celebrated my birthday by hopping on a plane and heading to LA!  Joe and I had celebrated my birthday on Saturday night with a dinner at Atlanta Fish Market and he bought me a beautiful Michael Kors Watch and slippers to wear around the house since it is getting cold here and the hard woods make it even colder. He had wonderful intentions to take me to breakfast early Monday morning before I headed to the airport, but as the alarm went off and we heard it raining out, we decided to postpone the event.  The day started with the TSA guy checking IDs singing happy birthday to me (the whole song as everyone stood in the crazy long line since it was the Monday after Thanksgiving and the highest time for business travel) and then I got upgraded to First Class just because it was my special day :)

Landing in LAX it was a pleasant surprise to find I did not need my winter coat for the week!  After a day of calls, my good friend Kristen from GT who lives out in Anaheim drove over an hour to come and have birthday dinner with me!  We were going to go to a seafood place only to find out it was closed, but ended finding an amazing sushi place just down the street (Tokoro Sushi)!  After dinner we wondered into the coolest desert place ever!  So this is an ice cream cookie desert place and you get to choose from about 20 different cookie flavors (and yes they have samples of all of them) and then about 20 different ice cream flavors and make a custom ice cream sandwich!  The man at the store was so helpful and patient with us and explained all of the exotic fruits and spices going into some of the cookies and ice creams.  After desert I headed back to the hotel since I always stay on east coast time and go to bed super early!

Sushi Dinner with Kristen :)

Ice Cream Sandwiches!!!

Tuesday was another busy day but at the end of the day I met up with Johnnie who was also a swimmer at GT living near where my hotel was.  We headed to a Japanese BBQ place and it was also such a cool experience!  Gyu Kaku was the restaurant, and you have your own personal grill that you get to grill all sorts of meats and veggies on.  We ordered quite an assortment and loved catching up!  Wednesday I was down in Anaheim for the night (right next to Disney) so I met up with Kristen again and we finally got some seafood at McCormick and Schmicks.  It was amazing and then we headed to Rocky Mountain Chocolate for desert.  It was so good seeing friends on my travels this past week, especially since it was my birthday week.

It was finally time to decorate our Christmas tree with what ornaments we had so that it would start looking more Christmasy in our house.  We put up the ornaments we had bought the weekend before and the lights, but realized we still needed a star/angel/bow to put on top.  We figure that could get bought at a later date, but we had fun decorating our first tree together!

Our Tree and Houses :)

Friday morning, Joe and I finally went on our breakfast date at White House in Buckhead, which was amazing.  He got biscuits and gravy with fried chicken and I got the gyro omelet.   Both were absolutely amazing and it was fun to get to celebrate my birthday with him a little late.  Before we knew it, it was the weekend and time to relax.  After Joe got home from work we went shopping for some Christmas stuff before heading to bed fairly early since it had been a long week for me.  We were up and at it early in the morning on Saturday and headed to the Dekalb Farmers Market to explore because it is such a fascinating place.  There are so many fish, spices, meats, fruits, veggies, etc. that we had never heard of so we had a lot of fun shopping.  We finished up grocery shopping at the international market on pleasant hill before heading home to relax a bit.  After getting a workout in, my parents arrived from Greenville so we caught up with them for a bit, talked about the wedding and planned what new projects we had wanted to do at our house. After a while, my mom had brought my birthday "cake" that she had baked that morning for us to enjoy, so that I did not have to go without that cake that I had had every birthday since I can remember.  It actually isn't a cake, it is a sweet bread similar to challah bread, but I wasn't a huge fan of cake growing up so my mom always made the bread in a circle shape and put candles in it for my birthday!  It is such a fun tradition and I always enjoy the "cake". Before we knew it, it was time to get ready for the Slovenian Christmas Party.

This was the second annual party, but my company Christmas party was the same time as this one was last year.  My parents had gone the year before, so Joe and I decided we might as well join to meet more of the Slovenian people in Atlanta.  We had so much fun doing a white elephant exchange, meeting so many new people from Atlanta, and catching up with others that we had met before. My parents also got to catch up with many friends they had known while we lived in Douglasville when we were younger.

My parents :)

Sunday morning we ate breakfast with my parents then headed up to Roswell to go to church with my parents and Joe's parents at St. Ann's.  After the mass we got to talk to the musician that will be doing our wedding who is absolutely amazing!  It was nice to get him confirmed and booked so that we had one more thing done on our wedding to do list.  After church we headed to Joe's parents house and we enjoyed tea/coffee/water before my parents headed home to Greenville.  After my parents left, Matt and Kim came over to Joe's parent's house so that we could all decorate the tree together before eating an early dinner. This week and weekend flew by but it was such a great time celebrating my birthday with friends and family.  Now, a week from home is just what I need, even if I will be on my own!