38

Friday was my birthday. 38. For several reasons, I feel significantly older than last year. Not just a year older but many years older. Not really in a bad way. I just feel like this past year has grown me more than the average year. Some was having Caleb leave early for heaven. But that was not all of it. I think part of it might be just really moving out of the having babies stage and into the raising the family phase. Some of it is my son moving so fast towards his teenage years, some of it is giving away all our baby stuff. A lot of it is my journey with God and learning to trust Him more and more. The uncertainty of our days and the reality of how nothing is really within our control except our desire to trust God and have faith in His faithfulness has really hit home this year. It has been a great year, I would not trade it for an easier one but I feel like it lasted more like 5 years.

For the 5th year now, I had my girlfriend birthday dinner. I really look forward to this night. I love to cook and really love to just be home hanging out on the couch with some good girlfriends. So I had fun making a yummy dinner. This year we had Filet Migneon, so good. I always need the chocolate too so I created a new yummy dessert this year, which was far to rich to have at 9pm and kept most of us up all night. We enjoyed the dinner, laughed, cried, shared our lives and really loved each other. Most of the girls left at midnight, but Mel and I talked to nearly 2am. It was wonderful..... until the next morning when Jack had a 8am soccer game, ugh.

My girls- Melody, Marnee, Me, Kristi and Michelle.

My late night girl :)

Rich chocolate cups.... I made the chocolate cups then, filled them with layers of chocolate ganache, Giradelli fudge brownies, fresh strawberries puree, and whipped cream. So good!

Chocolate covered strawberries too, of course.

The next day after a nap and some recover, the family celebrated my birthday with a dinner out (no clean up) and presents and chocolate at home. I am super excited that Brad got me my new food processor- yipee! I broke mine a few months ago and have been using this tiny chopper and it sucked. I LOVE my new one, it does everything and I needed something bigger so my salsa did not explode out the sides. Thanks honey. I also got a Bread Machine from Trudy (Brad's mom) and his cousin. I am super excited to try that too.

Me and my honey.

The clan. Bunch of blondies. Lucky to get Issie to look at the camera when chocolate is involved. She is a chocolate lover!

It was a nice birthday, I am interested to see what this year has to offer.