happy birthday, me!

my birthday celebrations this year were low key and perfect. we agreed that when i went to ireland back in february that that would be my birthday trip but tan still wanted to make it special for me. he got my beautiful flowers, spent all day saturday with me doing whatever i wanted (including a stop by the bijou market and guru's for breakfast of course) and then a birthday dinner at finca. their small plates were good but our favorite was the goat cheese something we got. i can't remember what it was called and don't care enough to go back and look at the menu but mmm. so good. it was fun having spanish food on my birthday again after grabbing some at the grove last year on our birthday date. 27 wasn't an easy year for me but it was still full of happiness thanks to my sweet family. i'm excited to see what 28 brings and hope to make the best of it, no matter what! 

twenty seven is already my fave.

my birthday was one of my favorites i've had in years thanks to tanner taking the day off of studying for finals and just hanging. (it's not hard to beat last year's, 9 month pregnancy moving away from tanner for two weeks two days before his final, birthday celebration though). i felt so loved and happy all day. we started out with trying out a new breakfast place in venice called flake. they're all about breakfast sandwiches and cereal, i guess. i got the super cro jo and tan got their breakfast burrito. i think i liked it more than tan and would be happy to go back again. it had a great little neighborhood vibe to it with people walking in to pick up breakfast in their pajamas and just walking back home. that's the sort of thing my dreams are made of - though i'm not all that comfortable just walking around in my pajamas.

after breakfast and morrie's morning nap, we headed to the mormon helping hands day of service with our stake at venice high school. they called it their "day of beautification" and we just helped clean up the school by painting, sweeping, trimming, whatever you can think of - it was done. it was great to be there with our old and new wards and be out in the sun doing good things. i even learned that venice high is where part of grease was filmed, the summer lovin' song to be exact.

tan went and picked up our craigslist couch after we got home and we currently have enough seating for a family of 12 i'm pretty sure. it was a great $250 find though that we're excited to put in our new house in a few weeks! :-o

my dream activity for the day was picnicking at echo park so we invited a few friends and made an afternoon of it once morris woke up. we told everyone to bring their own food and we'd provide the treats. and provide the treats we did! we picked up a few pints from my favorite ice cream shop, sweet rose creamery, and shared with everyone. we got their classic salted caramel, coconut lime, strawberry rhubarb and carrot cake with actual pieces of carrot cake in it that just about killed me dead it was so good. it was pretty windy and suuuper crowded but we still had a grand old time chatting and catching up with our friends. tan brought my birthday bike that i took around the park a couple times with morrie which was a blast. i'm so thrilled with that bike! best birthday gift. he also brought bocce ball so we slipped in a couple rounds with the utleys before they had to go back to redlands. 

we decided last minute to have a birthday date and we able to make it work thanks to sky coming over and watching morris for a couple hours. we tried figuring out what we wanted to do for a couple days and kept coming up dry with ideas since all the things we wanted to do were closed by the time we were going out at eight. the last temple session is at 5, the dine-in theater only had lame movies, and the museums all close at 7 so we were feeling out of luck. we walked out the door and remembered a scandanavian candy store my friends have been talking about that just opened up recently called sockerbit. it closed at nine so we hurried and made our way over before it closed too. we found out it was right by the grove once we got there and pretty much had our night set after that! sockerbit is the most beautiful candy store ever and full of delicious candies. we tried their watermelon candies, marshmallows, chewy chocolate toffees and banana split marshmallows. i died and went to heaven with every candy and tanner was pretty pleased with them. he's just a chocolate guy to the core so it was the nicest birthday gift to get so many delicious treats!

we headed to the grove and started wandering around with the intention of getting to anthropologie to get some new dish towels with some of my birthday money for the new house. neither of us has ever spent much time at that mall so we were pretty lost just walking through the parking lot and ended up in a little food district by accident. it was fortunate for us since we were both hungry but not hungry enough to go to a sit down restaurant. as we strolled along, we found a restaurant that was called little spain that tan got really excited about. he studied abroad in oviedo and was hoping they'd have one of his favorite dishes that i can't spell. thanks to my birthday luck, they had it and we were able to try it! it was really good and complimented my candy really well ;-) we had fun strolling in and out of stores the rest of the night and couldn't have been more thrilled with our date by the time we got back to the house.

annie posted an instagram on her birthday saying what she was grateful for this year in her life and i really loved it so i decided to do it yesterday. it was so nice to sit back and think about all of the blessings that make up my life and be truly grateful to just be alive. i have a feeling twenty seven is going to be a pretty swell year!

week[end] at a glance

our lives have been preeetty laid back lately. and by our lives i really mean mine. tanner is just studying studying like crazy for finals (his first one is on wednesdaayy :-/) and i've been searching for things to keep me busy. it's funny how quickly i forgot just how much studying final exams require even though they were only 4 months ago and i always tell everyone how crazy they are. 

so while tanner has been studying i:

became a cheer coach for one of my YW that tried out for cheer last week (she finds out tomorrow if she made the squad). i asked if she needed any help and her one question was "yeah, can you do your toe-touch?" which then turned into "show me your herky" (yes, show) and then "show me your other herky". these words might be ridiculous for non-cheerleaders but for any of you that cheered - she seriously made me do my left herky which i have never done before and i definitely rolled my ankle landing and was sore for days after this mini cheer clinic. and my hips popped so many times while i did my toe touches and herkies. so ridiculous and so true.

 have taken lots of walks** to enjoy all of the pretty new blossoms blooming around the neighborhood

**trips to the grocery store across the street  

helped the YW as they did some camp certification on building a fire with pretzels, cheetos and cotton candy (cool idea that wasn't mine)

took a sunday study break with tan and drove up to camarillo to spending the evening with family! sweet mindy and her family were in town for vacation so the nelsons invited us up for a sunday dinner that was full of some of the funniest children and delicious haystacks and the cutest/most thoughtful birthday cake made by mindy and natalie.

the cuuute cousins (what are they - second? third? none of the above?)

the twins and annie. poor little annie just cried when her friends left that night.

annie's birthday card absolutely melted my heart.

have been enjoying lunch breaks at home with this blue eyed law student

laughed so hard at tanner's favorite part of the balloon ceiling - when the balloons started floating down.

 LA day with dantzel in town starting out with delicious pancakes at the griddle in west hollywood

and then we stopped by the LACMA to see the metropolis ii in full swing and were amaaazed! 

dantzel bravely played in some modern art (the security guard said she wouldn't touch it because they don't wash those yellow strands and i certainly don't want to either)

and we finished off the birthday celebrations with a jello cake after a sunday BBQ last night

guess who blew out all her candles in one breath! winner!

and a stop at the LA temple visitor's center (our fave)

 i've just been missing this guy like crazy all week. having him by my side all night was a dream.

 another dantzel time! we love her.

 aaand here's my beautiful drawing made on an iPad in the kid's section.