Another Year, Another Birthday!

I have no pictures of my birthday. But being that I'm all grow-ed up now, that's permissible. But it was nice. Mark's mom got me a new shirt, with fabric that draped off to the side and held by a belt buckle looking thing. I like it, and it's always fun to get new clothes. Mark had asked me what I would like and my off-handed reply was slippers, because my feet were freezing at that moment. Sweetheart that he is, he got me some warm and fuzzy slippers! Daniel likes them as much as I do but for different reasons.... :-) And my family sent me a cute card with a gift card! It's so hard to decide what to use it on, which is half the fun. A book? A necklace? A non-stick skillet? Decisions, decisions.

Mark had to work on my birthday, so we celebrated yesterday with his parents coming for dinner. The Christmas tree was pulled out and put together, very sparsely decorated because of Daniel and his high reach. (The lights make the tree anyway!) One should celebrate special occasions with special foods, so I braved the unknown and made Chicken Kiev. It's chicken breast wrapped around parsley, green onions and garlic... and butter. The butter melts as the chicken cooks and sits in the chicken if you sealed it well enough, when you cut it the butter squirts out. We had problems with the chicken breasts size wise and I could use some practice with the rolling, but it was still really yummy!

And yes, I know that I decorate cakes, but I do not do my own birthday cake. I can't quite duplicate bakery whipped icing, although my buttercream comes pretty close! And I also just didn't have the energy to do one with the idea of a fancy dinner too. So I had an Oreo cake, chocolate cake with whipped icing, oreo's and chocolate shavings. It's so hard not to snack on it all the time.

Tonight is the ward Christmas party. I'm not sure if I'll manage to get pictures of the kids with Santa, Mark is working so I have to keep a hold of all 4 boys on my own. I'm thinking the stroller is getting busted out for this one! (getting a headache just thinking about the noise, and the running, and the line for Santa and dinner...)